Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey News Release — 2015-02-10

There were 5.0 million job openings on the last business day of December, little changed from 4.8 million in November, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Hires (5.1 million) and separations (4.9 million) were little changed in December. Within separations, the quits rate (1.9 percent) and the layoffs and discharges rate (1.2 percent) were unchanged. This release includes estimates of the number and rate of job openings, hires, and separations for the nonfarm sector by industry and by four geographic regions. There were 5.0 million job openings on the last business day of December, little changed from November. This was the highest level of job openings since January 2001. The job openings rate for December was 3.5 percent. The number of job openings was little changed for total private and increased for government in December. (See table 1.) Job openings increased for health care and social assistance and for state and local government.