📉 Jobs Openings Are Down — And Falling

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📉 Jobs Openings Are Down — And Falling

There’s no sugarcoating it: America’s job openings are in a steady, relentless decline.

Over the past three years, the number of available positions tracked by the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) has plummeted from over 11.5 million to just 7.5 million — a loss of more than 4 million job openings.

That’s not a dip. It’s a collapse in demand for workers.

Raw Job Openings Data – Last 3 Years
Job Openings have declined steadily since 2022, with little sign of recovery.

📉 What the Data Shows

What’s striking is not just the decline itself, but the consistency of it. Month after month, job openings have fallen with little interruption. Even when we smooth out the month-to-month noise with a rolling average, the trend remains stubbornly downward — and there’s no indication of a turnaround.

Rolling Average of Job Openings – Last 3 Years
Even the smoothed rolling average shows persistent downward momentum.

In early 2024, a brief uptick gave some hope that the market might be turning around. But it didn’t last. The latest data shows openings headed right back down, erasing those modest gains.

  • 80% of the past 3 years have shown declining momentum in job openings.
  • The average deviation from recent trendlines is deeply negative.
  • A z-score of –1.07 reflects how far current values are below their long-term averages.

🚨 Why It Matters

This isn’t just about numbers on a chart. Every dip in job openings represents fewer opportunities for millions of Americans — from recent grads seeking their first roles to experienced workers navigating layoffs or transitions.

It also raises broader concerns about:

  • 🏢 Employer confidence: Are businesses too uncertain to expand hiring?
  • 💰 Wage growth pressure: Fewer openings often mean less bargaining power for workers.
  • 📉 Recession risk: A persistently weak labor market is often a leading signal of economic slowdowns.

And while other indicators like total payrolls or wage growth may still look stable, JOLTS tells us something deeper — that the willingness of employers to hire is quietly but steadily eroding.

A drop in job openings doesn’t just affect the unemployed — it shrinks opportunities across the entire labor force and sends a signal about employer uncertainty, wage stagnation, and even potential recession risk.

💡 The Bottom Line

This isn’t noise. It’s a clear, sustained message from the labor market: demand for workers is shrinking. Until job openings begin to rise — and keep rising — any claims of a strong job market need to be taken with caution.

We’re not in a bounce-back. We’re still in the fall.

📊 Data Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (JOLTS) via FRED Economic Data