JOLTS, Quits and Labor Turnover

The unemployment rate tells you how many people are without a job, but it says nothing about how the labor market is behaving underneath that headline. The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) fills that gap by tracking job openings, hires, layoffs, and — the number markets watch most closely — quits: workers voluntarily leaving their jobs.

A high quits rate signals confidence: workers only leave voluntarily if they expect to find something better quickly, so it tends to rise when the labor market is tight and fall when workers feel insecure about their prospects elsewhere. Comparing openings to hires also reveals whether employers are struggling to fill roles (a tight market) or posting jobs they aren't actually able to fill.

Worked example. If job openings sit near 8 million while quits fall from 4 million to 3.2 million over a year, that combination suggests employers still want workers but employees have grown more cautious about leaving — often an early signal that labor-market momentum is cooling even before layoffs rise.

Markets and central bankers also watch the ratio of openings to unemployed workers as a tightness gauge: a ratio above one means there are technically more posted jobs than people looking for work, consistent with upward pressure on wages, while a falling ratio suggests slack building up in the labor market. Because JOLTS is released with a longer lag than the monthly jobs report, it functions less as a market-moving surprise and more as a confirming or contradicting data point layered on top of the headline payrolls number.