May 09, 2007 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Job openings by industry in March

On the last business day of March 2007, there were 4.2 million job openings in the United States, and the job openings rate was 2.9 percent.

Job openings by industry, seasonally adjusted, March 2007
[Chart data—TXT]

About three-quarters of a million of these job openings were in professional and business services. Education and health services had 687,000 job openings, and trade, transportation, and utilities had 679,000.

Among the industries shown on the chart, the job openings rate—the number of job openings divided by the sum of employment plus job openings multiplied by 100—was highest in professional and business services (4.1 percent) and education and health services (3.6 percent).

These data are from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.  To learn more, see "Job Openings and Labor Turnover: March 2007," (PDF) (TXT), news release USDL 07-0671.

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