Ben Casselman Profile picture
Econ/business reporter @nytimes. Formerly @fivethirtyeight @WSJ. Adjunct @newmarkjschool. He/him ben.casselman@nytimes.com Photo: Earl Wilson/NY

May 2, 2023, 6 tweets

Was tied up this morning, but #JOLTS looks interesting enough that it's worth a belated/abridged charts thread. I'm sure lots of others have already hit many of these points (looking at you, @nick_bunker, @DanielBZhao) but I can't resist.

Labor demand is clearly cooling. Job openings fell for the third straight month. Still high by historical standards, but now clearly falling (and quite rapidly).

The ratio of openings to unemployed workers hasn't been falling as steadily. But it's down to its lowest level since November 2021.

Quits aren't falling off a cliff, but they're also trending steadily down, suggesting workers are becoming more cautious about switching jobs.

The quits rate is now within two standard deviations of its prepandemic average (and only modestly above their prepandemic high). Openings still extremely high by historical standards, but falling rapidly.

Layoffs are still low by historical standards, but they're rising much more significantly than a few months ago. Hard to see in the total time series because of the pandemic spike, but clearer if you look at a truncated graph.

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