Digging into the Job Opening Data

As mentioned in the previous post, the Bureau of Labor Statistics makes detailed trend data available on all the key Job Opening and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS). You can take a look yourself at the BLS data page and then scrolling down to select one of the option buttons (e.g. for most requested statistics) for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey.

You can set the time period for the trend graphs created to be the entire time since the year 2000 that JOLTS data has been collected. Here are a few examples. It's somewhat puzzling to me why the Openings rate seems to be going steadily up from 12/2003 onward while the Hiring rate stays steady beginning around 12/2004.





There's a ton more data at the BLS web site. The biggest difficulty for me and I bet for others is just how time consuming and inflexible the BLS' trend visualization application (TVA) is to work with.