JOLTS and the quits rate
JOLTS — the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey — counts three flows monthly: openings (demand), hires (matching), and quits (worker confidence). Together they map the labor market's plumbing in a way the unemployment rate can't.
The quits signal
Workers quit when they have alternatives — quits fall when confidence in finding the next job collapses, typically ahead of layoff waves. Openings tell the demand side: the post-COVID record was roughly 2 openings per unemployed person — a ratio that had never reached 1 before 2018 — and its slide back toward 1:1 tracks labor-demand cooling as directly as the series can.
On this monitor
Our JOLTS flows signal tracks openings-per-unemployed and quits momentum — the demand/confidence pair that rolls over before payrolls do. It's a survey series with revisions, which is why it confirms rather than triggers: when openings fall, quits fall, and claims rise together, the labor market has turned.