Advertised job openings rose to 5.43 million in November, the Labor Department reported Tuesday morning, up from 5.35 million the month before.
Hiring also edged up to 5.2 million in the month, according to the monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which adjusts the monthly numbers to remove predictable seasonal fluctuations.
The survey contains more detail about gross hiring and layoff trends than the more-widely noted payroll jobs report. It’s released on a one-month lag, but it is watched by investors and officials at the Federal Reserve because it can provide hints about the health of the labor market that aren’t apparent in the jobs report.
On the whole, Tuesday’s report suggested underlying strength in the labor market.
In November, there were 1.5 unemployed workers for each advertised job vacancy, the same as in October. That ratio has been under 1.5 since June, and represents good new for people who lose jobs or are just starting out. There were as many as seven unemployed workers for each opening in the worst of the recession in 2009.
In another positive sign, 2 percent of workers with jobs quit those jobs in November. At 2 percent in November and October, the quits rate is as high as it has been during the economic recovering.
Quits are one of the statistics that Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen has identified as a key metric of where the economy is headed. Workers voluntarily quitting their jobs is viewed as a vote of confidence in the availability of jobs. At 2 percent, the quits rate is not far off from the pre-recession average of near 2.1 percent.
The trend into November of 2015 was the same for most of the recovery: Businesses and governments created new job openings faster than hiring.
Since the recession ended in June of 2009, job openings have risen by just under 130 percent, while actual hiring is up about 40 percent. In 2015 through November, openings increase 11 percent, while hiring was up just 3.4 percent. Vacancies reached new all-time highs in 2015, while hiring still has yet to recover the pre-recession highs.
One factor that clearly slowed hiring in 2015 was the collapse in the price of oil. Hiring fell by 9,000 over the course of the year in mining, a category that includes the drillers and oilfield support services workers that work in energy-rich states like Texas and North Dakota.
