Job Openings Edge Up to 7.3 Million in July 2026; Quits Fall to 3.1 Million

Job openings edged up to 7.3 million in July 2026, while every measure of labor-market flow moved lower. Hires and total separations each stood at 5.1 million, quits fell to 3.1 million, and layoffs and discharges eased to 1.7 million. The Bureau of Labor Statistics described each of those moves as little changed, and by its own significance tests they were. But the direction was uniform, and it points somewhere specific: employers are still advertising positions without filling them, and workers are staying where they are. July reads as a labor market settling into low churn rather than one turning down.

These figures cover July and were published on September 1, which leaves them a month behind the payroll record. JOLTS reads the same labor market from the demand side — how many jobs employers are trying to fill, how many people they took on, and how many left.

Openings Edge Higher, Flows Move the Other Way

The number of job openings rose 1.2 percent over the month to 7.3 million, with the openings rate holding at 4.4 percent. Measured against July 2025 the level is up 2.6 percent, so the stock of unfilled positions has not deteriorated over the past year — it has drifted modestly higher within a band the series has occupied since the spring. Durable goods manufacturing supplied the one industry gain the release singles out, at +76,000.

That is the demand signal, and taken alone it looks steady. The turnover figures underneath it do not.

The Turnover Picture Cools

Openings are a stock measured on the last business day of the month; hires and separations are flows accumulated across the whole month. They answer different questions, and in July they gave different answers. Every flow series declined:

• Hires: 5.1 million, a rate of 3.2 percent, down 5.2 percent over the month and 3.3 percent from a year earlier. Professional and business services accounted for the visible drag at -188,000.
• Total separations: 5.1 million, a rate of 3.2 percent, down 5.0 percent over the month. The release reports separations changed little across all industries — the decline was broad rather than concentrated.
• Quits: 3.1 million, a rate of 1.9 percent, down 4.9 percent over the month. That is the largest monthly decrease since April 2025. Other services contributed -46,000.
• Layoffs and discharges: 1.7 million, a rate of 1.0 percent, down 6.7 percent over the month and 6.0 percent from a year earlier. Finance and insurance fell -22,000.

Other separations — retirements, deaths, disability, and transfers within the same firm — were essentially unchanged at 350,000.

Hires and total separations both printed at 5.1 million, which is the arithmetic of a labor market roughly treading water on net employment. What matters is that both sides of the ledger got smaller at once. Fewer people were hired, and fewer people left. The quits rate, which measures workers' willingness or ability to leave a job, slipped to 1.9 percent and has spent the year oscillating around that level rather than recovering toward its earlier highs.

Layoffs Stay Contained

The composition of separations is where a churning labor market separates from a weakening one. In July it stayed firmly on the churning side. Quits at 3.1 million remain well above layoffs and discharges at 1.7 million, so voluntary departures continue to dominate involuntary ones. And layoffs did not merely stay flat — they fell 6.7 percent over the month and are down 6.0 percent from July 2025.

That is the most reassuring line in the release. A labor market where hiring is slowing because employers are cautious looks very different from one where separations are rising because employers are cutting, and the layoff series is not corroborating the second story. The establishment-size detail points the same way: the layoffs and discharges rate decreased among establishments with 1 to 9 employees, the segment usually first to shed workers under pressure. The hires rate decreased among establishments with 5,000 or more employees, which is a hiring-appetite signal rather than a distress signal.

June Revisions

The release also reworked June, and the openings revision is substantial enough to change the baseline this month is measured against:

• Job openings: revised down 177,000 to 7.2 million
• Hires: revised down 16,000 to 5.3 million
• Total separations: revised down 14,000 to 5.3 million
• Quits: revised down 19,000 to 3.2 million
• Layoffs and discharges: revised up 19,000 to 1.8 million

A 177,000 downward revision to openings is well beyond the routine range for this series, and it cuts in a particular direction: June's opening stock was smaller than first reported, which is what allows July's 7.3 million to register as an increase rather than a continued decline. Layoffs moving the other way — revised up 19,000 to 1.8 million — makes July's 1.7 million a genuine step down rather than a flat print. BLS attributes monthly revisions to additional reports arriving from businesses and government agencies after the initial estimate, and to the recalculation of seasonal factors.

What It Means for Labor Demand

Labor demand is flat, not falling. The openings stock is holding and marginally higher year over year, layoffs are contained and declining, and the deterioration in the July report is concentrated entirely in flow volume — the rate at which workers and jobs are matching. That is a market with reduced friction on the downside and reduced opportunity on the upside: few people are being let go, and few are finding it worth their while to move.

The quits rate is the variable to watch, because it is the one that carries information about worker confidence rather than employer intent. It has held between 1.9 and 2.0 percent all year, and July's reading of 1.9 percent sits at the low end of that band without breaking it.

The August 2026 JOLTS release is scheduled for Tuesday, September 29, 2026, at 10:00 a.m. ET. The figure that will settle the read is the quits level: another decline from 3.1 million would confirm that July's drop was the start of a trend in worker mobility rather than a one-month step, and would make the current low-churn balance harder to describe as stable. A rebound toward June's revised 3.2 million would mark July as noise in a labor market that is simply flat.