Job Openings Up 45% to 3.5 Million Since End of Recession

There were 3.5 million job openings on the last business day of January, unchanged from December, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The hires rate (3.1 percent) and separations rate (3.0 percent) were little changed over the month.

The job openings rate has trended upward since the end of the recession in June 2009. (Recession dates are determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research.) This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the nonfarm sector by industry and by geographic region for January 2012. The release also includes 2011 annual estimates for hires and separations. The annual totals for hires and quits increased in 2011 while the annual total for layoffs and discharges decreased.

Job Openings

The number of job openings in January was 3.5 million, unchanged from December. (See table 1.) Although the number of job openings remained below the 4.3 million openings when the recession began in December 2007, the number of job openings has increased 45 percent since the end of the recession in June 2009.