The Labor Department’s September 29 release shows fewer available positions in August, while hiring and layoffs changed little.
What the new report shows
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Tuesday, September 29, that employers had 7.1 million openings on August’s last business day. The job openings rate was 4.3%. The agency revised July’s openings estimate to 7.3 million, putting August’s level roughly 256,000 lower on the unrounded figures reported by Reuters.
The report also estimates 5.2 million hires and 5.1 million total separations during August. Within separations, workers voluntarily quit 3.1 million jobs, while layoffs and discharges numbered 1.6 million. The BLS said each of those measures was little changed from July. That matters because a lower openings estimate on its own does not establish a wave of job cuts.
Why openings and hires tell different stories
Openings are a snapshot of unfilled positions on the month’s last business day. Hiring, quits, and layoffs count activity throughout the month. Those different time frames mean the measures should be read together rather than treated as interchangeable. A job can remain open without an employer filling it, and a declining vacancy count does not necessarily mean the employer dismissed workers.
August’s figures suggest demand for workers eased compared with July’s revised reading, while actual hiring and layoffs held relatively steady. That is an interpretation of the survey, not a forecast of what employers will do next. The estimates can be revised as more survey responses arrive.
What to watch next
The BLS scheduled the September Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for November 3. Readers comparing labor-market reports should also consider payroll employment, unemployment, and wage data, which answer different questions. Our guide to reading inflation and jobs reports together explains how to avoid treating one release as the whole economic picture.
Sources
Featured image: office workspace photographed by Alesia Kazantceva, via Unsplash. The image is illustrative and does not depict the BLS survey.
[…] policy decisions should be kept separate from monthly data releases. AskNovus recently covered the August 2026 Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which measures openings, hires and separations rather than the impact of any single political […]