April 09, 2008 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Job openings in February

In February 2008, the job openings rate remained at 2.7 percent.

Job openings rate, total nonfarm, seasonally adjusted, January 2006 - February 2008
[Chart data—TXT]

The job openings rate remained essentially flat from August 2006 through September 2007 and then began trending downward.

Over the month, the job openings rate rose in education and health services (to 3.9 percent) and fell in manufacturing (1.8 percent).

Since the job openings series began in December 2000, three industries have consistently had higher job openings rates than the other industries: education and health services (3.9 percent in February), accommodation and food services (3.8 percent), and professional and business services (3.7 percent).

These data are from the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. To learn more, see "Job Openings and Labor Turnover: February 2008" (PDF) (HTML), news release USDL 08-0454. These data are seasonally adjusted; data for the most recent month are preliminary. Job openings include only those jobs open on the last business day of the month.

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The very first issue of The Editor's Desk (TED) was posted on September 28, 1998. TED was the first online-only publication of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. For 10 years, BLS has been committed to posting a new TED article each business day, for a total of over 2,400 articles so far.

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