The BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) can be used as a predictor of future jobs growth, and the predictive elements show that the year-over-year growth rate of unadjusted private non-farm job openings modestly declined. The headline view was little changed.

Analyst Opinion of JOLTS Data

The headline seasonally adjusted view shows little change in job openings - but the unadjusted data shows slowing. Even with the decline this month, JOLTS non-adjusted job openings remain about average for what was seen in the last 3 years.

Market expectations from Bloomberg / Econoday was 6.000 M to 6.350 M (consensus 6.150 M) versus actual of 6.1 million.

The graphs below uses year-over year growth of JOLTS Job Openings - both the level of openings and rate of openings.

Last month's graphs

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This Month's Graphs

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The JOLTS Unadjusted Private hires rate (percent of hires compared to size of workforce) and the separations rate (percent of separations compared to size of workforce - separations are the workforce which quit or was laid off).

Unadjusted Hires (blue line) and Unadjusted Separation Levels (red line) - Non-Farm Private

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Please note that Econintersect has not been able use the hire rate or the separation rate (or a combination thereof) to help in understanding future jobs growth. A Philly Fed study agrees with Econintersect's assessment. JOLTS is issued a month later than the jobs data - and correlates against one month old data.

For information, the Econintersect Employment Index and the Conference Board's Employment Index:

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Caveats on the Use of JOLTS

This data series historically is very noisy which likely is a result of data gathering issues and/or seasonal adjustments. Therefore this series must be trended to provide any understanding of the dynamics. One of two months of good or bad data are not predictive.