The two employment reports I look at every month come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Both have methodological issues, primarily relating to survey response problems. I also look at ADP’s data every now and then. The reports tend to come out in the same week, but are offset by a month by the month to which they relate. So today’s release of the JOLTS report, which is the job openings and labor turnover survey, relates to August but the employment data that will be released on Friday will be for September. The job openings number is closely watched because more openings theoretically imply a stronger, growing economy. Hires, fires and quits are similarly believe to suggest something about the state of the labor market and economy. Since the changes are very small percents of the total workforce, I am dubious about what the data shows, but it at least should indicate trends.
In any event the August JOLTS report, as usual, is hard to interpret. First of all, July’s openings were revised up significantly, so that instead of being below the then-consensus expectations, they were above. But August’s openings were about a 250,000 drop from that revised July number and below expectations, at least until they may be revised upward in succeeding months. But the total openings were 7.1 million, so really the changes are kind of small. Real estate-related job openings dropped, as did those for construction, manufacturing, business and professional services and private education. Trade, information, leisure and hospitality all had increases in job openings. The information one is interesting in light of all the concerns about AI’s effect on employment. As I would expect, so far it appears to be increasing jobs, not taking them away.
The balance between job openings and unemployed people is supposed to tell us something as well, theoretically about ease of finding a job. Unfortunately a lot of openings are fake in that the employer isn’t actively looking for new employees, and a large number of our unemployed persons are slackers who don’t really want to work. So who knows what the real comparison between openings and people who want a job is. Hires rose very slightly. Quits dropped very slightly. No real message there and I don’t see much of any significance in those categories for any specific industry sector. While some painted the report as negative, I don’t think it is at all. It suggests that the job market, which has chugged along at a pretty good pace despite various headwinds, is actually in pretty good shape. (BLS Report)
