Job Openings Plunge Below Lowest Estimate As Gov’t Openings Crater; Hiring Plummets

While today’s ADP report was a solid rebound from the worst monthly report in years (even if it missed expectations due to a sudden plunge in California payrolls), the same could not be said for the JOLTS job opening report that followed less than two hours later, and which was another epic disaster: for the month of November (recall JOLTS lags the payrolls report by a month), the US had only 7.146 million job openings, a huge drop from the 7.670 million in October (which was conveniently revised lower to 7.449 million) and the lowest since September 2024.

The November print was also a 3+ sigma miss to expectations and came in below the lowest estimate (that of TD Securities).

According to the BLS, the number of job openings decreased in accommodation and food services (-148,000); transportation, warehousing, and utilities (-108,000); and wholesale trade (-63,000). Job openings increased in construction (+90,000).

But the most notable drop by far, was that in government, where the number of workers collapsed to the lowest level since early 2021.

Meanwhile, after four years of the US labor market dodging the bullet, its luck has finally run out because while until just a few months ago, the labor market was supply-constrained, with more job openings than unemployed workers in the US, in November we are finally back to sharply demand constrained, with 685k fewer job openings than unemployed workers, the most since March 2021...

… and translating into a 0.9 ratio of job openings to unemployed workers, the first sub-1.0x print in 4 years.

While the job openings data was ugly and potentially another harbinger of the coming jobs recession – things were even uglier below the surface, as the number of new hires tumbled by 253K – the biggest one month drrop since June 2024 – to 5.1156MM the lowest since June 2024.

The only silver lining is that the number of people quitting their jobs – also known as the take this job and shove it indicator – rebounded by almost 200K, to 3.161MM, from 2.994MM.

Putting it all together, despite a rather solid ADP print earlier, today’s JOLTS report was quite terrible and certainly enough to ensure that Fed rate cuts continue (assuming no dramatic improvement in Friday’s job report). The flip side, of course, is that this report took place when the government was still mostly shut down, so our advice would be to just ignore everything since it is not indicative of the current state of the US economy after it reopened shortly after Democrats captiulated without achieving anything.