by Calculated Risk on 8/10/2016 10:11:00 AM

From the BLS: Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary

The number of job openings was little changed at 5.6 million on the last business day of June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.> ...
...
The number of quits held steady in June at 2.9 million. The quits rate was 2.0 percent. Over the month, the number of quits was little changed for total private and increased for government (+18,000). The number of quits increased in state and local government education (+20,000) and was little changed in all other industries.
emphasis added

The following graph shows job openings (yellow line), hires (dark blue), Layoff, Discharges and other (red column), and Quits (light blue column) from the JOLTS.

This series started in December 2000.

Note: The difference between JOLTS hires and separations is similar to the CES (payroll survey) net jobs headline numbers. This report is for June, the most recent employment report was for July.

Click on graph for larger image.


Note that hires (dark blue) and total separations (red and light blue columns stacked) are pretty close each month. This is a measure of labor market turnover.  When the blue line is above the two stacked columns, the economy is adding net jobs - when it is below the columns, the economy is losing jobs.

Jobs openings increased in June to 5.624 million from 5.514 million in May.

The number of job openings (yellow) are up 9% year-over-year.

Quits are up 6% year-over-year. These are voluntary separations. (see light blue columns at bottom of graph for trend for "quits").

This is solid report with job openings just a little below the record high set in April 2016.