JOLTS employment trends for April 2021 from the Federal Reserve survey.
- Prior report
- JOLTs job openings 9268K vs 8200K That is a record
- Quits 3952K vs 3568K last month. Quit rate at 2.7%
- Separations 5760K vs 5436K last month. Separation rate at 4.0% versus 3.8% last month
- Layoffs and discharges 1444K vs 1525K last month. Layoffs and discharges at 1.0% versus 1.1% in March. There were 1.444M people fired in April versus 9.307M last year
- There or 1.06 unemployed jobseekers for each available job
- 364,000 people left their employer due to retirements, transfers to other locations, death, and separations due to disabilities
The job openings certainly reflect the reopening demand for workers. The data is old but still quite strong. The number of vacancies exceeded hires by 3.2 million in April. That was the biggest gap on record. The hiring challenges have put into question the federal unemployment insurance program. Half of US states have announced that they would phase out that insurance program earlier than the September end date. Employers of also been offering bonuses, higher wages and health insurance to attract workers.
The data is somewhat contradictory to the weaker then expected labor data seen over the last few months where 559K and 278K new jobs were added. Although those numbers are trending in the right direction, they were less then expectations. The US still has a shortfall of 7.6 million jobs versus the pre-pandemic levels.
