Job Openings Unexpectedly Soar By Over 330K, Amid Near-Record Surge In Americans Quitting
After three straight months of disappointing JOLTS reports, moments ago the BLS reported that in September the number of job openings soared by 333K from an upward revised 7.190 million (vs 7.079 million pre-revision) to 7.523 million...
... beating estimates of 7.164 million handily, the first time the job openings print hasn't disappointed since May.
This was also the second upward revision to the data after three months of retroactive disappointments. Of course, nobody can possibly forget the three straight years of negative revisions between 2023 and 2025...
Where did the openings come from? According to the BLS the number and rate of job openings were little changed at 7.5 million and 4.5%, respectively. Job openings increased in state and local government, excluding education (+104,000). There were also material increases in Professional and Business Services jobs, in Information, in Trade and Transportation, and in Construction and manufacturing; these were offset by modest declines in Private Education & Health, in Financial Activities, and Leisure and Hospitality.
Following up on last month's huge drop in real estate, rental and leasing job openings, in September there was a sizable rebound, with the number of job openings rising from a 12 year low of 52K to 75K.
The September surge in job openings was juxtaposed with relatively flat employment during the month, which meant that after 9 months of labor surplus which ended in March, and after 5 months of modest improvements in the number of excess job openings, we just had the month with the biggest imbalance between job openings and unemployed workers, as the September surplus surged to 414K from 159K the month before, a welcome development for the broader labor market which in September saw a huge air pocket with just 29K new jobs added.
The latest JOLTS data also means that after dropping to 1.0x in August, the ratio of job openings to unemployed is once again on the way up, rising to 1.1x.
While the job openings number was far stronger than expected, in September we also saw a s burst of strength in both hiring and quits. The number of hires in Sept rose by 131K, from 5.271MM to 5.402MM, resulting in the second highest total hires print since 2024 (only March was higher at 5.535MM). Meanwhile, the number of people who quit their job exploded from 3.044 million to 3.365 million...
... soaring by a near record 10.5%, one of the highest outside of the covid chaos.
The surge in quits indicated a jump in confidence that better jobs await elsewhere, which the spike in job openings reaffirms.
It goes without saying that strong job openings print, while quits surge and hires rise, leads one to assume that the Friday job report will be much stronger than the 65K median estimate.
In any case, since this hires number feeds directly into the payrolls calculations (after netting out separations) this put a question mark to the September payrolls report which rose by a tiny 29K (at a time when the hires less separations print was 83K). And since the JOLTS implied number is far stronger than that, having printed negative for a third month in a row, we expect the August payrolls report this Friday to be yet another catch down, and will likely be much higher than the 29K increase reported last month, and also higher than the 65K expected print.
Overall, this was a stellar JOLTS report, with strength in both openings, hires and quits, and shows that after some modest weakness in the middle part of of 2026, US labor market is now once again recovering solidly, which could translate into another big beat in this Friday jobs report.
