# JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) The churn report: openings, hires, quits, layoffs. Where [[Nonfarm Payrolls]] gives the *net* number, JOLTS shows the gross flows underneath — and the quits rate is the best single read on worker confidence (people quit when they're sure they can do better). Launched 2002; became briefly famous during the 2021–2022 "Great Resignation," when record quits and two-openings-per-unemployed-worker became the labor side of the inflation debate. Politically it runs medium: the openings number gets cherry-picked both ways ("millions of jobs nobody wants to fill" as a welfare-policy cudgel; "record openings" as administration bragging) but lacks the visceral punch of the headline jobs number. Its known weakness — survey response rates that have collapsed toward 30%, making the openings level increasingly model-dependent — is the same capacity-erosion story tracked in [[BLS Data Integrity Crisis]]. In the 2026 "frozen labor market" (low hiring, low firing, low quitting), JOLTS is the series that actually shows the freeze. ## Latest reading *As of 2026-10-07 · refreshed monthly · the cross-indicator read lives at [[State of the US Economy]].* - **August 2026: job openings 7.1M** (7.079M), a rate of 4.3%. That is down **256,000** from July's revised 7.3M. - **Quits 3.1M**, a rate of **1.9%**, unchanged. A low quits rate means workers are not confident they can trade up. That is the "freeze" this page describes, now in the data: payrolls added only +29K in September while layoffs stayed low ([[Initial Jobless Claims]] at 197K). *Sources:* [BLS JOLTS, Aug 2026](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/jolts_09292026.htm) · [TheStreet](https://pro.thestreet.com/market-commentary/job-openings-quits-and-layoffs-all-fall-in-august) · [BLS Employment Situation](https://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm) ## See Also - [[Nonfarm Payrolls]] — the net headline - [[Initial Jobless Claims]] — the weekly layoff pulse