Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey News Release — 2013-02-12

There were 3.6 million job openings on the last business day of December, little changed from November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The hires rate (3.1 percent) and separations rate (3.0 percent) also were little changed in December. This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the nonfarm sector by industry and by geographic region. The number of job openings in December was 3.6 million, little changed from November. (See table 1.) The number of openings decreased in retail trade and was little changed in all remaining industries and in all four regions in December. The level of total nonfarm job openings was 2.4 million at the end of the recession in June 2009.