The number of job openings in January regained the several hundred thousand positions shed in December, landing at roughly 6.9 million in the first month of the year, according to updated government figures published Friday.
A job opening rate of around 4.2% in January, up from 4% in December, was lagged by a hiring rate of 3.3%, as the number of overall hirings remained level from December at about 5.3 million. Overall separations totaled 5.1 million, slightly lower than the 5.3 million separations in December.
Quits totaling 3.1 million and layoffs and discharges combining for 1.6 million of all separations “changed little,” the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) commented Friday in its monthly Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). Quits were 3.2 million and layoffs and discharges were 1.7 million the previous month.
With hirings flat and separations slightly lower, the BLS also reported that finance and insurance sectors observed the largest increase in job openings, adding 184,000 positions. Transportation, warehousing and utilities sectors saw both the fewest separations and largest pullbacks in hiring, followed by real estate and rental and leasing.
The JOLTS report overall portrays a labor market maintaining a low rate of hiring and firing, as it has since early 2025, but higher-than-expected job openings, with economists surveyed by Reuters having projected 6.7 million openings.
Labor supply and demand have remained muted over the past 12 months due to the combined effect of sustained macroeconomic uncertainty, restrictive monetary policy, elevated geopolitical risks, uncertain implications from advancements in AI and an immigration crackdown that has heavily curtailed the country’s existing and future flow of foreign-born workers.
Despite concerns of an impending labor downturn, which prompted the Federal Reserve to initiate a series of interest rate reductions starting last September, the nationwide unemployment rate stayed within the low-4% range through 2025, peaking at 4.6% in November but falling back to 4.3% in January. Unemployment rose to 4.4% in February.
The newly released job opening, hiring and separations data from January underscores the narrative that U.S. labor markets are slowing, albeit gradually and steadily, a policy stance Federal Reserve officials reiterated at their last meeting in late January.
News that employers shed 92,000 positions in February (reported separately by the BLS last week) and the continuing war with Iran have reminded markets of the fragile balance the Fed has struck, as both sides of the Fed’s dual mandate to maintain stable prices and maximum employment have been in tension for nearly a year.
After January’s decision to leave the federal funds rate unchanged, Fed Chair Jerome Powell told reporters that upside risks to inflation and downside risks to employment had consistently diminished over recent months, moving the dual mandate closer into balance, though tension still existed.
“I’m not making a judgment about how one of them is more at risk than the other,” he noted, “just that the risks to both have diminished.”
Reporting prewar figures this week, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said the U.S. central bank’s preferred inflation gauge remained around 3% in January, having made no net progress in returning to the Fed’s stated 2% target in 2025.
Renewed inflation fears have shifted the balance of risks once more, since the commencement of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes on Iranian military and government infrastructure on Feb. 28.
