Job Openings Outpace Hiring

JOLTS proved volatile in the January report, headlined by a far higher-than-expected 6.312 million for job openings but including heavy downward revisions to prior months. After the dust clears, openings are a very wide 729,000 above hires which came in at 5.583 million. This spread suggests that employers have lots of jobs to fill and may be having a hard time finding the right candidates.

Details include rising openings for construction and for warehousing and especially for professional and business services where gains point to general and immediate demand for labor. Another detail is the quits rate which is little changed at 2.2 percent and not -- despite how strong demand for labor is -- pointing to confidence among workers to shift jobs for higher pay.