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Handbook of Methods Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey Presentation

Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey : Presentation

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) program publishes seasonally adjusted and not seasonally adjusted estimates at the total nonfarm, total private, and government levels for all sampled North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) sectors and subsectors and total nonfarm estimates by region. Estimates are published monthly, with the publication dates set prior to the beginning of each calendar year. Estimates are released at 10 a.m. eastern time on the publication dates, which are usually in the second week of the month.

Estimates of rates and levels are summarized in the JOLTS monthly news release for the current month and the revised previous month estimates and are available at https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/jolts.pdf. Archived news releases are also available on the JOLTS website. Time series data are accessible via the JOLTS website by using the database tools. Significant change tables provide tests of significance for over-the-month and over-the-year changes. The JOLTS Publications section of the JOLTS website provides JOLTS-related articles from the Monthly Labor Review and other BLS sources.

JOLTS produces both a preliminary and final estimate each month with the final estimate being the revised preliminary estimate. The revised estimate incorporates any corrected or late-reported microdata. If additional corrections are needed, the data will be footnoted in the public database and noted on the BLS errata page. Please see Calculation section for a description of sampling and nonsampling error.

Annual estimates of rates and levels of hires, quits, layoffs and discharges, other separations, and total separations are published in the January news release, which comes out in March each year. The annual estimates of levels are approximately equal to the sum of the 12 published monthly levels. The annual estimates of rates are computed by dividing the annual level by the Current Employment Statistics (CES) annual average employment level and multiplying the resulting quotient by 100. The annual rate is approximately equal to the sum of the 12 monthly rates.

Annual estimates are not calculated for job openings. Job openings are a stock, or point-in-time, measurement on the last business day of each month. Only jobs still open on the last day of the month are counted. For the same reason that job openings are not cumulated throughout each month, annual figures for job openings are not created by summing the monthly estimates. Because hires and separations are flow measures and are cumulated over the month with a total reported for the month, these annual figures are calculated by summing the monthly estimates.