U.S. Job Openings Slump to Lowest Since 2014, Separations Ease

(C) Bloomberg. The Pressroom Restaurant and bar stands temporarily closed on the square in Bentonville, Arkansas on May 28. Photographer: Terra Fondriest/Bloomberg

(Bloomberg) — U.S. job openings plummeted in April to the lowest since 2014 and separations remained elevated as the pandemic ripped through the labor market with devastating speed.

The number of available positions dropped to 5.05 million from a revised 6.01 million in March, according to the Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, or JOLTS, released Tuesday. That compares with a median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists for 5.75 million openings.

Separations, which include layoffs and quits, cooled to 9.89 million in April from a record 14.64 million in March, when shutdowns related to the coronavirus prompted employers to sharply reduce staffing levels. While the survey illustrates how quickly employers went from hiring to workforce reduction, last week’s jobs report showed a record 2.5 million surge in payrolls and indicated the labor market is getting back on track as business lockdowns are lifted.

The JOLTS data lags behind the monthly employment report by a month, but it offers a level of detail not available in the jobs report. The Labor Department said it modified the April JOLTS estimates to better reflect the virus impact and the figures aren’t directly comparable with the survey period used for the establishment survey in the monthly jobs report.

Only 1.79 million people quit their jobs in April, down from 2.79 million a month earlier. The quits rate, which measures voluntary job leavers as a share of total employment, dropped to 1.4% — the lowest since April 2011. At the start of the year, when the jobs market was at its best in decades, the quits rate was near the highest level in history.

As employers cut millions of workers from their payrolls across the country, there were 4.6 unemployed workers competing for every job opening in April. That stands in stark contrast to a two-year trend in which vacancies exceeded the number of unemployed.

The JOLTS report showed hires dropped to 3.52 million in April from 5.11 million a month earlier, while the hires rate declined to a record-low 2.7%.

(C)2020 Bloomberg L.P.