Hires Fall to 4.8 Million in February as Job Openings Hold at 6.9 Million

Employer demand for workers softened again in February 2026, with the hiring flow slowing markedly while the stock of unfilled positions held near its January level. The number of job openings was little changed at 6.9 million on the last business day of February, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported, leaving the job openings rate at 4.2 percent. The hiring side told a sharper story: hires fell to 4.8 million, down 498,000 over the month and 387,000 over the year, and the hires rate declined to 3.1 percent.

The openings level sat 358,000 below January's upwardly revised 7.2 million and 360,000 below February 2025, a decline of 4.9 percent over the month and 5 percent over the year. The visible weakness in postings was narrow: openings decreased in accommodation and food services (-211,000) and in mining and logging (-12,000).

The Turnover Picture

Hires and separations are flows measured across the entire month, and in February both ran lower. Hires fell to 4.8 million while total separations were little changed at 5.0 million, leaving the inflow of new employees below the outflow of departing ones for the month. Both the hires rate and the total separations rate stood at 3.1 percent.

The retreat in hiring was concentrated in the same consumer-facing corner of the economy that drove the openings decline. Hires decreased in accommodation and food services (-178,000) and in construction (-88,000). Total separations, meanwhile, decreased in federal government (-16,000).

Quits — the voluntary departures that serve as a gauge of workers' willingness or ability to leave a job — were little changed at 3.0 million, with the quits rate at 1.9 percent. The quits level sat 157,000 below January and 179,000 below a year earlier, and the quits rate held a tenth of a percentage point below both its January reading and its February 2025 reading. The industry detail was mixed:

• Accommodation and food services: -119,000
• Wholesale trade: -35,000
• Federal government: -6,000
• Nondurable goods manufacturing: +21,000

Layoffs and the Composition of Separations

The involuntary side of the ledger stayed quiet. Layoffs and discharges remained unchanged at 1.7 million, with the layoffs and discharges rate little changed at 1.1 percent, and the level sat 146,000 below February 2025. Beneath the flat aggregate, industries diverged:

• Retail trade: +72,000
• Nondurable goods manufacturing: -26,000
• Federal government: -3,000

Other separations — departures due to retirement, death, disability, and transfers to other locations of the same firm — decreased to 277,000, down 75,000 over the month.

That composition is the more informative signal. With quits at 3.0 million set against layoffs and discharges at 1.7 million, the bulk of February's outflow remained voluntary. A labor market shedding workers involuntarily would show the opposite tilt; this one is still churning, just at a slower tempo than a year ago on both the voluntary and involuntary sides.

January Revisions and the Annual Update

Revisions ran in one direction this month, and they were large enough to reshape the trajectory. BLS revised January's estimates as follows:

• Job openings: +294,000, to 7.2 million
• Hires: +53,000, to 5.3 million
• Total separations: +39,000, to 5.1 million
• Layoffs and discharges: +29,000, to 1.7 million
• Quits: -6,000, to 3.1 million

Because January's openings were revised up by 294,000, February's 6.9 million reads as a step down from a higher base than the one originally published. An analyst working from the unrevised January print would understate how far postings retreated over the month.

These revisions also carry a methodological component that deserves explicit flagging. BLS notes that data are revised with the release of January data to incorporate the annual updates to the Current Employment Statistics employment estimates and to the JOLTS seasonal adjustment factors. Because JOLTS employment levels are ratio-adjusted to CES employment levels, and because the seasonally adjusted estimates are recalculated for the most recent five years, an annual update of this kind can reset the level of the entire series rather than only the most recent month. Comparisons drawn against pre-update vintages of these series should account for that.

What It Means for Labor Demand

February's data describe a labor market cooling on both sides of the ledger, with the demand side giving ground faster than the separation side. The job openings rate at 4.2 percent is down from 4.4 percent in January and from 4.4 percent in February 2025. The hires rate at 3.1 percent is below both January's 3.4 percent and the 3.3 percent of a year earlier. The quits rate at 1.9 percent, a tenth of a point below both comparison periods, is consistent with workers who are less confident of landing something better, or who see fewer openings worth moving for.

The reassuring counterweight is that none of this is arriving through involuntary separations. Layoffs and discharges held at 1.7 million and sit below their year-ago level, and the layoffs rate at 1.1 percent remains a small fraction of total employment. What has weakened is recruitment, not job security — employers have slowed the pace at which they add people without moving to shed the ones they have.

The next JOLTS release, covering March 2026, is scheduled for Tuesday, May 5, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. ET. The figure that will settle the question is the hires level. If March's hires print recovers toward January's revised 5.3 million, February's 4.8 million will read as a one-month interruption in an otherwise stable hiring flow. If it holds near 4.8 million, the slowdown in recruitment is the trend rather than the exception, and the openings series will likely follow it down.