“Get a job,” sneered Generation Jones, to the estimated 25 million adult children living with their parents in America.
“There are no jobs, mom,” came the exasperated rejoinder, from the depressed crumple huddled on the basement couch, under a throw blanket.
“Sure there are,” mom said. “7.271 million of them.”
That was the headline JOLTS print from the BLS on Tuesday. There were 7.271 million vacancies across the US economy on the last business day of July, the bureau said.
That was up from 7.182 million the prior month, but June’s total was revised lower. If you go by the initially-reported tally for June, there were fewer open positions the following month. Hires fell by 278,000, to 5.054 million, the lowest since January.
There’s the 30,000-foot, long-term view, for whatever it’s worth to you. Both openings and hires have “stabilized” near pre-pandemic levels, with the scare quotes to acknowledge that this year’s seen some pretty big month-to-month swings on both series.
Tuesday’s release, which didn’t recast the macro narrative in any meaningful sense, showed the uptick from the prior month’s downwardly-revised headline was attributable to state and local government openings as well as vacancies in healthcare and social assistance. No surprises there.
The disparity between manufacturing and services was interesting, though. There were more factory openings on the last day of July than at any point in almost three years, while leisure and hospitality vacancies were the fewest since 2021.
Earlier on Tuesday, ISM’s manufacturing survey for August found the employment gauge printing in expansion territory for a second month even as it disappointed consensus.
Both quits and layoffs fell in the JOLTS release, underscoring the “low hiring, low firing” characterization of the US labor market. (You’ll be less likely to quit if you doubt the prospects for finding a new job.)
As for the so-called “jobs-to-jobless” ratio monitored by the Fed, it ticked up to 1.05, the highest since January of 2025.
July marked the fourth consecutive month during which there were more vacancies than jobless Americans actively seeking work.
The usual caveat applies: The JOLTS release is increasingly viewed as unreliable due to low response rates and generalized skepticism about the accuracy of government macro data.
Now let’s bring it home.
“You were the one who told me to ‘follow my passion.'”
“I said a BA in English, I didn’t say anything about any ‘Byronic heroes,’ whatever those are.”
“Just leave me alone, mom.”
“Get off your ass and go weld somethin’.”
I have long questioned the JOLTs tallies because they were inflated by spurious impossible-to-fill job offers from firms trying to get H-2B visas approved. (The requirement that you must prove that you cannot find any US citizen to do the equivalent work.) Those have been essentially ghost listings because they often demanded sets of qualifications that very few people in the US would have. Especially for $40k per year! The sheer numbers of ghost job listings everywhere has caught the eye of some members of Congress. It’s about time.
I was surprised by “There were more factory openings on the last day of July than at any point in almost three years, while leisure and hospitality vacancies were the fewest since 2021.” Thank you for pointing that out. That makes sense given the polls which show large majorities of Americans supporting the “revival” of manufacturing in the country. When the same pollsters asked if you would be willing to work in a manufacturing job, the results were flipped. Perhaps there are not enough citizens to fulfill the president’s dream.