Job Openings Fell to 6.5 Million
The market lost 386,000 openings in one month and 966,000 over the year. Companies stopped posting jobs while workers stopped quitting. The labor market didn't cool, it froze.
More from One Number
The Biggest Striker in America Last Year Was a University
No employer in America had more of its workers walk out last year than the University of California. All of American manufacturing, combined, had 6,200.
There's Something You Need To Know About Job Number Revisions
About six in ten businesses have replied when the jobs report is published each month. More than nine in ten have by the final estimate, two months later. The jobs data did not get less reliable. The first draft of it did.
How Much of a Single Monthly Print Can You Actually Act On?
Payrolls rose 162,000 in August, more than five times the trailing average. BLS publishes a confidence interval of plus or minus 122,000 on that figure, and twelve recent reports have already slipped below the line it draws.