Summary
The January JOLTS report shows that the labor market is as tight as ever, but that demand has steadied over the past few months. Revisions pushed job openings in December from a slight increase to a new all-time high, while January featured a slight dip to a still better-than-expected 11.3M openings.
January Openings Still Near Record High
Job openings fell slightly to 11.3M in January once upward revisions to previous months’ data are considered (Figure 1). The newest data show that December 2021 featured an all-time high in job openings at 11.4M, eclipsing the previous high of 11.1M openings set in July 2021. The number of openings is still 4.1M (57%) higher than its 2019 monthly average of 7.2M, and has remained over 10M openings for the eighth consecutive month. The rate of increases in job openings has cooled in recent months however, suggesting hiring challenges may be close to topping out. READ FULL ARTICLE>>