Job openings rebounded to near post-recession highs in October, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.
There were 4.83 million advertised job openings in October, according to the BLS’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey released Tuesday morning, up following a slight dip to 4.69 million in September. October’s improvement came despite a slight decline in new job postings with state and local governments, the BLS noted.
Total openings are up 21 percent since October 2013.
Actual hires, however, were down slightly month-over-month following a spike in September, from 5.08 million to 5.06 million. Hiring is up 12 percent year-over-year, a strong pace, but not as good an acceleration as in job creation.
The improvement in gross job creation and hiring reported by the JOLTS report matches the strong net job creation numbers from the more widely watched monthly employment report.
Friday’s job report showed the U.S. adding 321,000 jobs in November and the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.8 percent, the latest evidence that the labor market’s progress has accelerated throughout 2014.
Tuesday’s JOLTS report contains finer detail about the state of the job market, although it tends not to move markets as the monthly jobs report does because it comes out on a one-month lag.
Total separations, including layoffs, quits and firings, remained steady in October, according to the BLS.
Quits, which are usually interpreted as a vote of confidence in the labor market, declined slightly in the month to 2.72 after a big jump in September from 2.51 to 2.74 million. The quits rate ticked down from 2 percent to 1.9 percent. A normal, healthy level is just above 2 percent.
Quits and other indicators of job market churn feed into the evidence that Federal Reserve officials review in making decisions about monetary policy.
Fed officials are scheduled to meet in Washington next week to set the central bank’s monetary policy. A key question facing Chairwoman Janet Yellen and other members is whether the job market has improved to the extent that they can move up the expected date of the first increase in short-term interest rates since the recession began.
Currently, the Fed’s monetary policy statement guarantees that rate hikes will not come for a “considerable time.” But Yellen and others have stressed that their decisions will be based on incoming data. Following the recent run of positive news about the economy, investors will be looking out for the possibility that the “considerable time” language is dropped in the Fed’s official statement next Wednesday.
