Job Openings vs Hires 2026: 1.36 Openings for Every Hire (BLS JOLTS)

Live data from the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and the BLS Current Population Survey, seasonally adjusted. Latest month: August 2026 (preliminary).

How many job openings are there for every hire right now?

There were 1.36 job openings for every hire in August 2026. That is the headline number behind job openings vs hires, and it comes straight from the latest BLS JOLTS release.

Here is the arithmetic. Openings were 7,079,000 and hires were 5,192,000. Divide the first by the second and you get 1.36.

Put another way, employers ended the month with about 1,887,000 more open roles than the number of people they actually hired that month.

The latest month is preliminary. BLS revises each month once, when the following month comes out, so the newest ratio can still move by a few hundredths.

What does the latest JOLTS report show?

The tracker above shows the latest levels and rates side by side with the month before and a year earlier.

The rates are the more useful lens for recruiters. A hires rate of 3.3% means employers added new hires equal to 3.3% of their payroll in August 2026. A quits rate of 1.9% means about 1.9 in 100 workers left voluntarily.

How has the openings per hire ratio changed since 2019?

The ratio has drifted back toward normal but has not fully returned. It averaged 1.23 in 2019, collapsed to 0.69 in May 2020 when recalls pushed hires above openings, then surged to 1.86 in March 2022.

Since 2022 the ratio has cooled every year. Openings fell much faster than hires, which pulled the ratio down from the 2022 average of 1.75 to 1.35 in 2025.

Which industries have the most openings per hire?

The gap is not evenly spread. In August 2026, federal government had the most openings per hire at 4.35, followed by finance and insurance at 3.21 and information at 2.80.

These are Work Insiders calculations: each industry’s openings level divided by its hires level for the same month, both from JOLTS.

Health care and social assistance, the biggest single source of openings, carries 1,359,000 openings against 703,000 hires, a ratio of 1.93, against 1.36 for the economy as a whole.

At the other end, arts, entertainment and recreation (0.75), construction (0.81) and real estate and rental and leasing (0.93) had the fewest openings per hire. High turnover businesses fill and refill jobs quickly, so openings rarely pile up there.

What are the openings, hires and openings per hire by industry?

One caution. Industry figures for a single preliminary month are noisy, especially for small sectors like information and mining. Treat a ratio as a signal only when it holds for several months.

How many job openings are there per unemployed person?

There were 1.01 job openings per unemployed person in August 2026. This uses JOLTS openings of 7,079,000 and the BLS household survey count of 7,031,000 unemployed people for the same month.

For comparison, the ratio was 1.21 in August 2019 and peaked at 2.04 in March 2022, when there were two openings for every jobseeker. It was below 1.0 in every published month from July 2025 through March 2026, meaning slightly more jobseekers than openings.

There is a gap in the series. BLS did not publish household survey data for October 2025 because of the 2025 lapse in appropriations, so no openings per unemployed figure exists for that month.

Why are there more job openings than hires?

Openings exceeding hires is normal. Even in 2019 the ratio was above 1. But four forces keep the gap wider than it was before the pandemic.

Are ghost jobs inflating the openings number?

Partly. Greenhouse reported in December 2024 that 18% to 22% of jobs posted on its platform in any given quarter are classified as ghost jobs. Not every ghost listing reaches JOLTS, though.

BLS only counts an opening if a specific position exists, work could start within 30 days, and the employer is actively recruiting from outside, according to the JOLTS technical note. A posting with no real role behind it should not qualify, but survey respondents may still report evergreen or pipeline roles. Our ghost jobs guide covers this in depth.

Is slow hiring keeping roles open longer?

Yes. JOLTS counts openings at a single moment, the last business day of the month, while hires accumulate over the whole month. A role that takes 60 days to fill shows up as an opening in two monthly snapshots before it becomes one hire. Longer interview loops and more approval steps push the ratio up. See our time to hire data for current benchmarks.

Do skill gaps explain the industry differences?

They explain a lot of them. Health care carries 1.93 openings per hire because licensed clinicians cannot be produced quickly. Finance, information and federal roles often require specific credentials, clearances or niche technical skills, which shrinks the qualified pool even when overall unemployment is moderate.

What is the low hire, low fire market?

It is a labor market where few people get hired, few people quit and few people get laid off. That is exactly what JOLTS shows. The hires rate was 3.3% in August 2026, against 3.8% to 4.0% in every month of 2019. The quits rate was 1.9%, against 2.3% to 2.4% in 2019.

Layoffs are low too, at 1,641,000 or 1.0% of employment in August 2026, against 1,832,000 a year earlier. When workers stay put, fewer seats open through churn, and the openings that remain are often harder to fill. Read more in our quits rate breakdown.

Do other sources measure the openings gap differently?

Yes, and the method matters. A MyPerfectResume report published in November 2025 framed the same JOLTS data as a share of openings that never turned into a hire.

The two views use the same raw data but answer different questions. The ratio tells you how much demand there is per filled seat. The share framing assumes every opening not matched by a hire that month is a dead posting, which overstates ghost jobs because many of those roles are simply still in process.

The June 2025 difference (30% versus 26.1%) most likely reflects BLS revisions made after that report was written, since JOLTS revises five years of data each January. We could not access the full report to confirm its exact method.

What does job openings vs hires mean for recruiters and agencies?

For agency owners, a ratio of 1.36 means clients still have more open roles than they can fill on their own, but the urgency of 2022 is gone. Expect fewer panic requisitions and more pressure on fees.

Target the sectors with high ratios. The sectors at the top of the industry table above, currently federal government, finance and insurance and information, show openings well above hires. Those are the clients most likely to pay for outside help.

Be careful with low ratio sectors at the bottom of the table, which usually include construction and hospitality. They fill roles fast through high turnover, so contingency search fees are a harder sell there. Volume and temporary staffing fit better.

Low quits mean passive candidates are harder to move. Build longer nurture cycles and sharper compensation data into your pitch. Our cost per hire calculator helps you show a client what an unfilled seat really costs.

Watch the ratio monthly. If it climbs back toward 1.5, demand is heating up. If it slips toward 1.2, the 2019 norm, the market is loosening and candidates will be easier to find. We track this every month in the Staffing Market Brief, and you can find more series in our labor market trackers.

How we built this page

All JOLTS figures are seasonally adjusted levels and rates pulled automatically from the BLS public data API, and this page picks up each new JOLTS release within a day. Monthly history starts in January 2019 and covers total nonfarm openings and hires.

Openings per hire is a Work Insiders calculation: the openings level divided by the hires level for the same month. Annual figures are simple averages of the monthly ratios. Openings per unemployed divides JOLTS openings by the seasonally adjusted CPS unemployment level for the same month.

The latest month is preliminary and will be revised. A missing October 2025 CPS value is noted where it applies. Terms like quits rate and hires rate are defined in our recruiting glossary.

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