After shutdown-driven delay, the latest JOLTS report revealed another mixed bag for the labor market

Guess who’s back, back again? The JOLTS report!

After a multiple-month pause due to the government shutdown, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey data for September and October. The latest report is, as usual, a mixed bag. While job openings ticked up slightly from the late summer, hiring continued to stagnate overall. With turnover getting more sluggish, employers may have an employee-resentment time bomb on their hands, experts say.

Diving into the data. Employers had around 7.7 million job openings in September and October, up from 7.2 million in August. That topline increase in openings could signal a change from the declining job openings seen earlier this year.

“That might signal that we’re seeing this kind of pivot point where there will be a slow rebound that’s going to arise out of this month of data,” Nicole Bachaud, a labor economist at ZipRecruiter, told HR Brew. “It’ll be really interesting to see if November’s data is able to hold pace with that, or if this was a blip due to the nature of the changes in data collection. My gut reaction tells me that we will continue to see this trend moving forward.”

At the same time, though, employers made 5.1 million hires in October, unchanged from August and a decline of 225,000 from September. Job seekers have expressed frustrations searching for jobs as businesses have pulled back on hiring and accused of ghosting candidates.

“Even if job openings have been holding steady, the fact that it’s not translating into hires as much as we’ve seen, even in recent history, points to softer conditions for workers,” Daniel Zhao, Glassdoor’s chief economist, told HR Brew. “Because ultimately, workers care about getting hired. They don’t care about how many job openings they see.”

Employers reported 2.9 million quits in October, down 187,000 from September. Quits overall were down 276,000 year over year. Meanwhile, businesses reported another 1.9 million layoffs and discharges, up 73,000 from September.

In healthcare and social assistance, which has largely accounted for job growth in the US in recent years, job openings increased by 49,000, but hires fell by 95,000. At the same time, quits in healthcare declined by 114,000 month over month, while layoffs rose to 184,000 in October, an increase of 13,000 from September and of 35,000 from August.

While a change over one or two months isn’t enough to definitively claim a slowdown in the sector, it’s worth keeping an eye on in coming months.

“I wouldn’t say today’s JOLTS report is sending a red flag on how the healthcare industry is doing, but of course, healthcare is crucial to supporting continued jobs growth moving forward, so it’s definitely one that we need to pay extra attention to,” said Zhao.

In the federal government, which has been battered by layoffs, deferred resignation offers, and shutdown-driven furloughs since the Trump administration came back into power earlier this year, turnover appeared to stagnate in October.

Quits in the federal government rose to 46,000 in September—when the severance period would end for thousands of federal workers who accepted the Trump Administration’s “fork in the road” deferred resignation offer—and fell to 21,000 in October, though are still up 7,000 year over year. Layoffs in the sector fell to 5,000 in October, down 2,000 month over month and 1,000 year over year.

“Quits have been trending up for federal government, especially leading up to the shutdown, during the shutdown. So it’s interesting that we didn’t see a continued increase in quits in that sector, given a lot of the challenges that workers have been kind of put up against,” said Bachaud.

Zoom out. Labor turnover in the US has largely stagnated in 2025. Some employers have pulled back on hiring, and workers—unconfident about job search prospects—have primarily stayed put in their jobs. Before HR leaders start patting themselves on the back over their low attrition rates, they may want to get clear-eyed about what’s possibly brewing underneath.

“For HR leaders, that's a recipe for disengagement,” said Zhao. “If the job market does heat up in 2026, that could lead to a wave of turnover as those workers suddenly hit the doors.”

Should hiring pick up in 2026, employers can expect to have renewed difficulty finding the right talent. With demographic changes hitting the labor market, including many skilled workers retiring, the skills mismatch between job openings and available candidates could worsen.

“That’s where I think a lot of the challenges lie ahead for the labor market, is going to be in the supply side and the tightness. Employers are going to have to be expected to either compete for talent or figure out how to do more with less,” said Bachaud.

Employers can prepare by working smarter, not harder—speeding up their hiring process, for example, by using AI to automate time-consuming recruitment tasks, or embracing more fluid, fast approaches to upskilling talent, suggested Bachaud.

“That’s how employers are going to really be winning top talent in 2026,” said Bachaud. “I think that’s going to be the bigger consideration for a lot of employers.”