Employers had about one job opening for every unemployed worker in August, the quits rate stayed near its lowest level since at least 2016 outside the pandemic’s first months, and layoffs stayed low — a labor market where, for now, few people are moving.
That is the picture in the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for August, released Tuesday. BLS said openings were “little changed” at 7.1 million, with hires, separations, quits and layoffs all described the same way: little changed or essentially unchanged from July.
What BLS reported
Job openings stood at 7.1 million in August, a rate of 4.3%, BLS said. Hires were 5.2 million (3.3%). Total separations were 5.1 million (3.2%), including 3.1 million quits (1.9%) and 1.6 million layoffs and discharges (1.0%); the rest are other separations. BLS revised July’s openings figure up by 64,000, to 7.3 million.
BLS said quits fell in wholesale trade and in state and local government education, and rose in nondurable goods manufacturing and private educational services. The agency notes that because quits are mostly voluntary, “the quits rate can serve as a measure of workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs.”
What the numbers mean
JOLTS counts job openings, hires and separations across the economy each month. By BLS’s own figures, August looked like a market with little movement in either direction.
The comparisons below are Plainly Now’s calculations from BLS data.
- About one job opening per unemployed person in August (7.08 million openings against 7.03 million unemployed people), versus roughly two in March 2022 and about 1.2 in August 2019. The ratio was below one in most months from March 2025 through March 2026 (BLS published no unemployment figure for October 2025).
- The 1.9% quits rate has been that low, going back to January 2016, only in spring 2020 and in eight months since late 2024; it never dropped below 2.0% in 2016-2019, and it was 3.0% at its 2021-22 peak.
- The 3.3% hires rate has matched or undercut that level in most months since mid-2024.
- Layoffs, at a 1.0% rate, ran below the roughly 1.2% average BLS data show for 2019.
Taken together: hiring is slow, quitting is rare, and layoffs are low. Employers are not cutting many jobs, but they are also not filling many. BLS says the quits rate reflects workers’ willingness or ability to leave jobs; the data do not say which.
Other readings
The same broad caution showed up elsewhere this month. The August jobs report, released by BLS on Sept. 4, showed payrolls up 162,000 with unemployment unchanged at 4.1%.
The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index, also released Tuesday, fell to 81.9 from 88.6. In its survey, 23.6% of consumers called jobs “plentiful” and 21.9% said they were “hard to get” — a gap the Conference Board said “retreated by 2.5 ppts to just +1.7%.”
The Federal Reserve’s Sept. 16 policy statement, issued before Tuesday’s data, described a similar-sounding labor market in its own terms: “Job gains have kept pace with the workforce, and the unemployment rate has changed little.”
What’s next
The next monthly jobs report, covering September, is due from BLS on Friday, Oct. 2, at 8:30 a.m. ET. The next JOLTS release, covering September openings and turnover, is scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 3, BLS said.