Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey - JOLTS

Categories: Econ

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) made a survey called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, just to shock you with the name. Consider us shocked, BLS.

JOLTS will have you jolting back in your seat at the number of job vacancies there are in the market (or not...depending on the market at the time). JOLTS is a monthly survey of many different types of firms, collecting information about employment, current job openings, ease of recruitment, and turnover.

The BLS is nice enough to organize the job openings and turnover data by industry and region every month.

Yeah, you'd better get on it if you’re thinking of switching jobs. It's a gold mine of job info...so get JOLTed.

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finance a la shmoop what is the unemployment rate so negative like

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shouldn't it be the employment rate at least that way we'd have a bigger number

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and bigger is better in the u.s. right well anyway the unemployment rate in

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mine shaft giving us an early heads-up on the direction of the economy well [canary hopping in cage in mineshaft]

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unemployment rate shrinking too fast I eat everyone's getting jobs well if so [government officials in conference]

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then beware inflation is coming which historically has motivated the Fed to

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you find yourself at a cocktail party debating this notion make like the

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Jordan Peele movie and get out but if you can't and you must debate well there

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is a quote natural rate unquote of unemployment of around five or six

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percent yeah zero percent unemployment ain't never

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gonna happen generally the higher the unemployment rate the worse shape the

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story the government can help create a bunch of temporary or low-paying jobs

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too cosmetically raise the employment rate in the short term like ahead of an [happy government officials in conference]

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election but the quality of those jobs is probably not great like think temp

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workers at the DMV well after a while of longer term unemployment some people [long line at the DMV]

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Glassdoor looking for work so they're kind of permanently in the unemployment

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license plate that shows you red yeah a whole lot of government workers I [hand adds stickers on back of license place]

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guess do that now bad times

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