On the surface, today's JOLTS report (which after we caught the BLS fabricating the data aggressively [7]a year ago is triple-scrubbed by government bureaucrats) was great: with total job openings of 4,835K, this was supposedly the highest number of job openings since January 2001, and just shy of the record high 5,273 seen in January of the same year, just before the recession hit to be precise.
There was, however, a big problem. Because while according to the BLS survey employers have almost never had more open positions, they have also decided to put an abrupt stop to hiring, something which certainly points to a major disconnect in the US labor market. In fact, according to the JOLTS report, its far less tracked "Hirings" number plunged from 4,934K to just 4,640K. This was the lowest number of monthly hiring since January's "Polar Vortex" ground the economy to a halt. What's worse, the 294K plunge in monthly hiring was the biggest monthly drop since June 2010, and was the third biggest monthly plunge in hiring since Lehman!
[8]
And putting this number in context, because hiring is a leading indicator to key payroll inflection point, one wonders: with TTM job gains having plateaued at 2.6 millio and hires tumbling, is this about to ripple through the labor force and result in a major drop in the October payrolls?
[9]
For the answer: check back in just under a month.
Source: JOLTS [10], St Louis Fed [11] [11]
