Labor
JOLTS — July 2026
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey · released September 1, 2026 · 10:00 AM ET · Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
The read · narrated
The read
Five headline numbers in Tuesday’s jobs report. The agency called every one little changed. Hold onto that phrase — the data underneath has been saying it for nine months.
Month to month, it doesn’t look still. The published levels have hiring down two hundred seventy-eight thousand in July. The average monthly swing this past year: two hundred eleven thousand.
Take three months at a time. Employers hired five point two million people a month over the last three. The same over the three before that. And the three before those. Nine months, one number, within a tenth of a percent.
We got that wrong last month. We called June’s quitting a one-year high, and said nobody was being pushed out. The agency has since revised June’s quits down, and its layoffs up.
One line is moving. Openings, same three windows, oldest first: six point nine million, seven point one, seven point three. Employers advertise more. The people changing jobs, unchanged.
The level is the story. The hiring rate: three point two percent. Since twenty ten it’s been lower in eight months — six in the financial crisis, one when the country shut down, one this February.
Now the half that changes it. In twenty ten, when hiring ran this slow, layoffs averaged one point four percent. Today, one point zero — lower in twelve months since, nearly all in the twenty twenty-one boom. Same hiring speed. Different market.
Quits say it from the worker’s side. One point nine percent — outside the shutdown, not lower since twenty fourteen. People aren’t leaving, and leaving is how most workers get a raise. The wage line is flat.
The bond market barely registered. The ten-year rose four basis points that day — all four inflation compensation. The real yield, the part that answers to labor, didn’t move. Our last read found the mirror: all real, no inflation. Oil and a factory survey landed that minute.
Which fits — nothing asked the Fed for anything. Since the payroll read we’ve said tightening is off the table, easing isn’t on it. Quits at the floor: no wage pressure to fight. Layoffs at the floor: nobody to rescue. Watch the layoff rate, not the openings headline. In a market hiring this slowly, that’s what holds it still.
The numbers
| Measure | Latest | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Job openings | 7.27M · July | ▲ up 89K — the one line still drifting higher |
| Hires | 5.05M · July | — flat for nine months on three-month averages |
Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, July 2026, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, released September 1, 2026 (USDL-26-1432). All figures seasonally adjusted, total nonfarm. The full print: job openings 7,271K (4.4% rate); hires 5,054K (3.2%); total separations 5,072K (3.2%); quits 3,056K (1.9%); layoffs and discharges 1,666K (1.0%). The release describes every one of those five as “little changed” over the month at the total-nonfarm level (separations: “changed little”), and reports no decrease for hires or quits in the aggregate — the month-over-month level changes cited in this read are arithmetic on the published levels, not findings of the agency. Industry changes BLS does name: openings up in durable goods manufacturing (+76,000), hires down in professional and business services (−188,000), quits down in other services (−46,000), layoffs down in finance and insurance (−22,000). The nine-month flatline: hires averaged 5,213K per month across May–July, 5,216K across February–April and 5,213K across November–January — a spread of 3.7K, or 0.070%, on a base of 5.2 million, while the average absolute month-over-month change across the trailing year was 211K. Job openings over the same three windows ran 6,879K, 7,131K and 7,330K, a rise of 451K. Where the levels sit: across the 199 months from January 2010 through July 2026, the hires rate has been lower than 3.2% in eight — January, February, June, August and September 2010, January 2011, April 2020 and February 2026. The layoffs rate has been lower than 1.0% in twelve, eleven of them in 2021–22. Excluding the March–August 2020 shutdown months, the quits rate has not been below 1.9% since December 2014. The 2010 comparison: in 2010 the hires rate averaged 3.2% — the same speed as today — with the layoffs rate averaging 1.4% and the quits rate 1.4%, against 1.0% and 1.9% now. On the correction: our June read (published August 4) carried quits at 3,232K, described as the most in a year, and stated that the layoff uptick had not continued. This release revises June quits down 19,000 to 3,213K and June layoffs up 19,000 to 1,785K; June openings were revised down 177,000 to 7,182K and June hires down 16,000 to 5,332K. JOLTS is the most heavily revised release this publication covers; revisions that cut against a prior read are stated on-air rather than quietly absorbed. Deliberately not cited: the gap between openings and hires (2,217K in July), for the same reason as last month — the series swings too hard to carry a claim; and the establishment-size detail, where the hires rate fell among firms with 5,000 or more employees while the layoffs rate fell among those with 1 to 9, which is a genuine finding but not one this read had room to teach. Year-ago comparison (July 2025): openings 7,089K, hires 5,225K (3.3%), quits 3,132K (2.0%), layoffs 1,772K (1.1%). Market reaction is from the U.S. Treasury daily par yield curve and Federal Reserve series via FRED: on September 1 the 2-year rose from 4.34% to 4.39%, the 5-year 4.49% to 4.55%, the 10-year 4.75% to 4.79% and the 30-year 5.25% to 5.27%. Decomposed, the entire 4 basis points on the 10-year was inflation compensation — the 10-year TIPS yield closed unchanged at 2.44%. That session is not attributable to this release: the ISM manufacturing and prices indexes were published in the same 10:00 AM minute, and crude oil had risen roughly 6% over the two preceding sessions. A single session’s move reflects everything priced that day. Next report: Tuesday, September 29, 2026, 10:00 AM ET, covering August.