JOLTS report

JOLTS stands for the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. It samples employers and reports, for one reference month, the number of job openings on the last business day, the number of hires made during the month, and total separations divided into quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations. The identity underneath it is simple bookkeeping: employment at the end of a month equals employment at the start plus hires minus total separations.

Two figures derived from it get more attention than the headline count. The quits rate is quits during the month measured against total employment, and it is read as a gauge of confidence on the grounds that a worker who resigns has usually secured another position or expects to. The ratio of openings to the number of unemployed people is read as a measure of how tight the labour market is, and it is the figure most often cited when the survey is discussed alongside a rate decision, because the balance between vacancies and available workers bears directly on wages and therefore on inflation.

The timing is what trips readers up. The release arrives roughly five weeks after the month it describes, so by publication day the monthly payrolls figure for that same month is already known and a more recent payrolls figure often is too. The survey is describing a period the market has already priced, which is why it is treated as confirmation rather than news, and why its effect on prices is usually smaller than its prominence in commentary suggests.

The openings series carries a specific dispute. Collection rests on a sample with a response rate that has fallen over time, so the published figures carry wide confidence intervals and are revised, occasionally by amounts larger than the change being discussed. Beyond the sampling, one camp argues that the cost of listing a vacancy online has fallen so far that openings now include duplicated and permanently open postings, which would inflate the series against its own history; another holds that the survey asks specifically about positions an employer is actively trying to fill, so the definition already excludes that. The argument matters because the openings figure is the numerator of the tightness ratio.