March 11 (UPI) — American job openings increased in January, offering a brief sign of stability as the economy’s direction remains questionable due in part to the flurry of layoffs directed by the Department of Government Efficiency.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday that its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey showed job postings rose to 7.7 million that month, up 232,000 from December and slightly more than the Dow Jones estimate of 7.6 million. The numbers put the January ratio of openings to available workers at around 1.1 to 1.
The largest portion of the increase came from the retail sector, which saw a gain of 143,000 available positions, while finance gained 122,000. Professional and business services suffered a negative period with a decrease of 122,000, while leisure and hospitality dropped by 46,000.
Another upward statistic was the quits measure of worker confidence in the ability for people to move to other jobs, which ticked up to 3.27 million, an increase of 171,000.
The job tracking stats did not cover the terminations instituted by DOGE, which read all January job separations as “little changed” at 5.3 million and 3.3%, as were quits at 3.3 million and 2.1% and both layoffs and discharges, which also stayed relatively flat at 1.6 million and 1.0%. Any other types of separations also barely changed at a 350,000 count for the month.
In a commentary piece published by ZipRecruiter’s chief economist Julia Pollak Tuesday, she wrote that “January’s numbers were too early to reflect the Trump Administration’s newly implemented federal hiring freeze and layoffs. We will likely see the impact of those policy changes in the February and March reports, where a sharp drop in government openings and a spike in layoffs could appear.”