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Chart: Job openings, hires and separations in 2008
Job openings and hires declined during 2008, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of job openings, a stock measure referenced to the last day of the month, dropped from 4.4 million, seasonally adjusted, in December 2007 to 3.2 million in December 2008 after trending down steadily over the year.
Hires, which is a measure of worker flows, also trended down steadily over the year. Hires dropped from 5.1 million, seasonally adjusted, in December 2007 to a low of 4.2 million in November 2008 and then increased to 4.5 million in December 2008. Job openings and hires also declined in 2007.
The total separations level which was 5.0 million, seasonally adjusted, in December 2007, fluctuated over the course of the year reaching a high of 5.2 million in April 2008 and returned to 5.0 million in December 2008.
This data is from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and is seasonally adjusted. To learn more, see "Job openings and hires decline in 2008," (PDF) by Katherine Klemmer, Monthly Labor Review, May 2009.
