February 8, 2012 (The Editor’s Desk is updated each business day.)

Job openings in December

There were 3.4 million job openings on the last business day of December, up from 3.1 million in November.

Job openings level and rate, total nonfarm, seasonally adjusted, January 2007–December 201
[Chart data]

Although the number of job openings remained below the 4.4 million openings when the recession began in December 2007, the number of job openings has increased 39 percent since the end of the recession in June 2009.

The job openings rate—2.5 percent in December—has trended upward since the end of the recession in June 2009, when the job openings rate was 1.8 percent.

These data are from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey and are seasonally adjusted. For more information see "Job Openings and Labor Turnover — December 2011" (HTML) (PDF), news release USDL-12-0214. Data for the most recent month are preliminary. The job openings rate is the number of job openings on the last business day of the month as a percent of total employment plus job openings.

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