If you live in America and want a job, there are plenty available.

Caveats apply. Lots of them. The fine print says just because you can get a job doesn’t mean it’ll be the job you want, or the job you went to school for, trained for or are otherwise qualified to hold. You may end up miserable, underpaid and quite possibly both, although wage growth’s ostensibly robust and running well ahead of headline inflation.

I could go on. But according to the BLS, there are still more open jobs than there are unemployed Americans. Indeed, there were 8.098 million job openings across the US as of the last business day of November, according to data released Tuesday.

As the figure shows, the release marked the first time job openings exceeded eight million since May. Hires, though, fell to 5.269 million, the fewest since June and the second-fewest of the post-pandemic era. (“Now hiring. Only not.”)

Consensus expected 7.74 million from the headline job openings print. So, 8.1 million counted as a meaningful beat (no economist forecast a print above eight million), and it was almost all professional and business services, whatever that means to you.

Layoffs remained subdued (at 1.1, the rate’s still below the pre-pandemic average), and quits moved down to 3.065 million, erasing October’s uptick.

The quit rate, at 1.9, revisited the cycle low.

All in all, the JOLTS release reflected still sturdy demand for labor. There are openings aplenty, even as actual hiring continues to moderate. There’s no evidence employers are keen to lay off workers, but the quit rate, having receded to pre-pandemic levels, suggests the employed aren’t feeling especially brave when it comes to voluntarily “separating themselves” in pursuit of better pay.

The jobs-to-jobless ratio, at 1.13, now sits at a five-month high.