“Reverse Schizophrenic” JOLTS Report: Job Openings Plunge As Hiring Soars

Jon Economy

When we discussed last month’s JOLTS report – Janet Yellen’s favorite labor market indicator – we used one word to describe it: “schizophrenic“, because while the BLS reported that job openings in April soared to the highest on record, hiring crashed, confounding not only economists, but also the supervisors of BLS goalseekers who “came up” with the number. Fast forward to today, when moments ago the latest JOLTS report summarized, with its usual 2 month lag, the labor situation in the US. And, once again, we have one term to describe it, or rather two: “reverse schizophrenic”, because it was the inverse of everything that was an outlier in last month’s report: as job openings crashed by 301K from a downward revised 5.967MM (the original number was 6.044MM) to 5.666MM, far below the expected 5.950MM, and indicative of a job openings rate of 3.7% vs 3.9% last month…

…hiring exploded by 429,000 to 5.472MM, the second highest monthly print on record, following the lowest total hires number since April 2016.

This post was published at Zero Hedge on Jul 11, 2017.