Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey News Release — 2010-10-07

There were 3.2 million job openings on the last business day of August 2010, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The job openings rate was unchanged over the month at 2.4 percent. The hires rate (3.2 percent) and the separations rate (3.2 percent) were little changed. This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the total nonfarm sector by industry and geographic region. Job Openings The number of job openings in August was 3.2 million, which was little changed from July. Although the month-to-month change is small, the number of job openings has risen by 863,000 (37 percent) since the most recent series trough of 2.3 million in July 2009. (See table 1.) This trough immediately followed the end of the recession in June 2009 (as designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research).