February 11, 2011 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)
Job openings and labor turnover in December 2010
Over the month, the job openings rate was essentially unchanged in December 2010, at 2.3 percent (seasonally adjusted). Since the most recent series trough in July 2009, the number of job openings has risen by 0.7 million, or 31 percent.
![Job openings rate, total nonfarm, seasonally adjusted, January 2008–December 2010](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925034534im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2011/ted_20110211a.png)
[Chart data]
From November to December 2010, both the hires rate and the separations rate were also unchanged, at 3.2 percent each.
![Hires and separations rates, total nonfarm, seasonally adjusted, January 2008–December 2010](https://webarchive.library.unt.edu/web/20120925034534im_/http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/images/2011/ted_20110211b.png)
[Chart data]
There were 4.2 million hires in December 2010, 9 percent higher than the most recent trough for this series, which occurred in June 2009. This trough coincided with the official end of the most recent recession.
Despite the gains since June 2009, the number of hires in December remained below the 5.0 million hires when the recession began in December 2007. Since their respective troughs, the hires level has risen at a slower pace than the job openings level.
These data are from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. To learn more, see "Job Openings and Labor Turnover: December 2010," (PDF) (HTML) news release USDL-11-0152.
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