LinkUp Forecast: May JOLTS report by the BLS

LinkUp’s JOLTS forecast for May is 7.96 million open jobs, bringing the number of job listings down this month from last. Our predicted 1.2% decrease in job openings indicates a decrease diverging from our last 3 forecasts which remained flat.

In fact, this forecast marks our first under 8 million job openings since February of 2021. Now 40,000 openings is not a wild dip by any means, but these days job market watchers are fond of extracting insight at the second decimal point. Case in point: analysts who draw out inflation data beyond the BLS single decimal reading to squint it into worse news than it really is.

Of course, it’s possible that this decline in openings is indicative of more serious cooling in the labor market—it would be welcome news to analysts salivating for rate cuts that feel further from us every day. But all signs continue to point to an economy eating all its vegetables: employers added 272,000 jobs in May, wages continue to outpace inflation, and talk of recession is on very few lips indeed. Looking at our JOLTS forecasts in the last two years, what we continue to see instead is the steady, Even-Steven cooling of a soft landing that persists.

Each BLS survey report of monthly job openings and labor turnover is released a full month after-the-fact. Our job data consistently marks a strong correlation to the BLS numbers, with the significant advantage of a month’s lead time to the official release.

We’ll continue to monitor and report on the evolving state of the labor economy. In the meantime, for an in depth overview of the job market, key concepts and labor market metrics, check out our Jobs 101 blog series.