US September job openings near 7.5 million, with little change in hiring or layoffs

Applicants and employers talk at a First Source Jobs Program job fair on October 24, 2014. Archival photo. It is not a photograph of the November 2026 data release. Photo: Mscalafani · CC BY-SA 4.0.

Job openings and staff turnover measure different things

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics released its September JOLTS survey on November 3. Job openings stood at about 7.5 million on the last business day of the month, with an openings rate of 4.5%. There were approximately 5.4 million hires and 5.3 million total separations during September. The agency described the overall change in each of those three measures as little changed. Quits, by contrast, rose to about 3.4 million, while layoffs and discharges remained little changed at roughly 1.6 million.¹

These figures cannot simply be subtracted from one another to estimate net job creation. Openings count unfilled positions at a particular point at month-end; hires and separations measure staff movements throughout the month. Nor do job openings represent people who have already signed contracts and are about to start work. Mixing these measures can obscure the distance between employers' hiring intentions and actual employment. The bureau also revised August openings upward by about 111,000 to 7.2 million, so comparisons with September should use that revised base.¹

Industry changes do not yet establish a market turning point

Industry detail offers more specific signals than the headline totals. Openings in state and local government, excluding education, increased by about 104,000. Accommodation and food services recorded around 158,000 more hires and 197,000 more quits. Layoffs and discharges in health care and social assistance fell by approximately 70,000. These are estimates for individual industries in a single month; they do not establish that the entire US labour market is accelerating or weakening in unison.¹

September's figures are more consistent with continuing hiring demand and a partial recovery in worker mobility than with a clear labour-market turning point. Quits are often used to assess workers' willingness or ability to change jobs, but an increase does not automatically imply rising wages. Similarly, a stable overall layoff count does not rule out pressure at particular companies or in particular regions. Payroll employment, unemployment, wages and subsequent JOLTS revisions will still be needed to judge whether these signals persist.

Source notes

1. 2026-11-03 10:00 ET · Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey News Release — September 2026 · US Bureau of Labor Statistics. ↩ ↩² ↩³