Daniel Zhao Profile picture
Jul 6 9 tweets 6 min read
U.S. job openings dropped to 11.3 million in May, showing signs of cooling even though demand still remains well above pre-recession levels. Even if the job market is cooling from white hot to red hot, it's still hot.

#JOLTS 1/ Image
The drop in job openings was primarily driven by professional & business services (-325,000) and #manufacturing (-208,000). Prof & biz services openings dropped 14% MoM as hiring freezes crimped demand & pushed it back to late-2021 levels.

#JOLTS 2/ Image
Manufacturing job openings dropped by 208,000 or 20% MoM in May, though labor demand in manufacturing has been more volatile, so May is still roughly consistent with levels we've seen for much of 2021–2022.

#JOLTS 3/ Image
The increase in #retail job openings (+104,000) in May is also not really consistent w/ stories of rotating demand from goods to services. Leisure & hospitality (+73,000) also saw an increase in job openings, suggesting consumer spending remains strong.

#JOLTS 4/
Chair Powell's oft-cited unemployed-vacancy ratio ticked up in May, rising to 0.529 from its low of 0.502 in March, as unemployment stayed level but openings began to cool.

Flipped, that's about ~1.9 job openings per unemployed worker down from ~2.0.

#JOLTS 5/ Image
Quits cooled as well in May, falling to 4.27 million. Though like job openings, quits are still not far from record highs. Quits rose the most in leisure & hospitality (+54,000) and fell the most in financial activities (-55,000).

#JOLTS 6/ ImageImage
Layoffs & discharges ticked up in May, but remain near record lows. Layoffs didn't increase much in information (+1,000), financial activities (+10,000), professional & business services (+6,000)—all sectors where we've heard prominent stories of layoffs recently.

#JOLTS 7/ ImageImage
Quits & openings both fell in May, though they stayed firmly elevated. May is solidly in the cluster of dots in the top-right of the graph below, indicating the Great Resignation is still going on even as the labor market begins to cool.

#JOLTS 8/ Image
All-in-all, the #JOLTS report indicates the labor market was still hot at the end of May. Recession fears did pick up in June, so it remains to be seen how labor demand holds up, but overall a positive sign for solid job gains in Fri's #jobsreport.

9/9

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More from @DanielBZhao

Jul 8
June's #JobsReport shows the job market holding steady despite recession fears. Job gains slowed modestly to 372,000, beating expectations, and unemployment held flat at 3.6% for the 4th month in a row.

This is still a hot labor market even if the broader economy is cooling.

1/
Job gains cooled only modestly in June, beating expectations. Job gains overall seem to have shifted into a lower gear in the last few months, but recall that in 2019's hot job market, monthly job gains averaged 164k. This is still a healthy clip.

#jobsreport 2/ Image
Most industries added jobs in June in broad-based gains across the board. A few industry stories:
1. Despite concerns about rotation from goods to services, job gains returned in #retail (+15.4k) and held strong in leisure & hospitality (+67k)

#jobsreport 3/ Image
Read 12 tweets
Feb 4
Today's January #JobsReport is significantly stronger than expected. Job gains totaled 467,000 even as Omicron drove record high COVID cases. Unemployment ticked up to 4.0%

Huge payroll revisions too: Dec up to 510,000 from 199,000. Nov up to 647,000 from 249,000.

1/
Charts will be slow this morning, but 2 more things:
-Labor force participation ticks up to 62.2%
-Weekly hours were down 0.2 hrs, employee absence due to illness up to 3.6 million, a new record high; showing Omicron had impact even if it reverse slow jobs growth

#JobsReport 2/
Slipping in a few charts while I can: we added 467,000 jobs in January. In hindsight, the end of year slowdown no longer looks as dramatic. Despite Omicron now *and* Delta in the late fall, jobs growth stayed surprisingly strong.

#JobsReport 3/
Read 19 tweets
Feb 1
Job openings rose to 10.9 million in Dec, again approaching record highs despite the surging Omicron wave.

Even though Omicron is pushing COVID to record levels, employers are hoping that the wave will be temporary & are keeping jobs open for when the wave recedes.

#JOLTS 1/
The increase in job openings in Dec was concentrated in accommodation & food services, despite the impact of Omicron. Job openings in the sector are lower than the summer peak of 1.67 million, but still up significantly over the pre-pandemic record of 1.02 million.

#JOLTS 2/
Quits fell slightly, but still, 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in December—down only modestly from last month's record highs.

#JOLTS 3/
Read 6 tweets
Jan 4
Job openings fell to 10.6 million in Nov, still near record highs but lower as the resurgent Delta wave in Nov crimped demand for workers, even before the impacts of Delta are fully felt.

#JOLTS 1/
The slowdown was primarily in accommodation & food services (no surprise worker demand there falls as the pandemic worsens). Job openings in accommodation & food services are at their lowest since April 2021, though they're still up 62% over the course of the pandemic.

#JOLTS 2/
Despite the drop in job openings, the number of unemployed per job opening fell to 0.65 in Nov (or 1.54 job opening per unemployed worker). A year ago, this figure was reversed with 1.59 unemployed per job opening.

#JOLTS 3/
Read 8 tweets
Dec 8, 2021
Job openings rebounded to 11 million in Oct, just barely below record highs.

Job openings are rising again after the peak of the Delta slowdown in Sep and as hiring in leisure & hospitality picks up again.

#JOLTS 1/
The increase in job openings was concentrated in accommodation & food services as employers felt more comfortable hiring with the Delta wave starting to wane in Oct. Remains to be seen whether that will continue in Nov given the slow #jobsreport we saw last Fri.

#JOLTS 2/
There are 0.67 unemployed workers per job opening (or ~1.5 job openings per unemployed), the largest imbalance since the JOLTS survey began in 2000.

In raw terms, if every unemployed worker was matched to a job, there would be 3.6 million unfilled jobs leftover.

#JOLTS 3/
Read 7 tweets
Oct 22, 2021
New BLS state #JOLTS data today! Playing around with it:
-Hires per job opening don't seem to be improving in August
-Gap seems roughly stable btwn states withdrawing early from UI vs those not
-UI withdrawal proponents would want to see evidence of hires/opening ⬆️ , gap ⬆️
Consistent w/ the rough comparisons in state employment data released this morning as well. See @bencasselman's thread for findings & appropriate caveats (most of which apply to the JOLTS data too):
The longer history shows the gap is not very stable btwn groups & the range of values is very wide, emphasizing the difficulties in this type of analysis.

Interestingly, early withdrawing states have generally had higher hire yields except early in the pandemic.
Read 4 tweets

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