December job openings and labor turnover, consumer credit, et al

Major economic reports that were scheduled to be released last week included the Employment Situation Summary for January and the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for December, both from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and both finally back on schedule …however, because the government was partially shut down on Monday and Tuesday due to a dispute over funding for ICE, the January Employment Situation Summary release was postponed until Wednesday, February 11th, leaving the JOLTS report, delayed until Thursday, the only major release from government agencies this week….however, late on Friday the Fed released the Consumer Credit Report for December, which showed that overall consumer credit, a measure of non-real estate personal debt, increased by a seasonally adjusted $24.0 billion, or at a 5.7% annual rate, as non-revolving credit grew at a 3.2% rate to $3,780.9 billion in December, while revolving credit outstanding grew at a 12.6% rate to $1,328.6 billion….that left consumer credit up at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.0% rate over the fourth quarter, and up 2.4% for the entire year, with revolving credit up 3.4% and nonrevolving credit up 2.0% from the end of 2024.…

The week’s privately issued reports included the ADP Employment Report for January, wherein the payroll processor reported that private employment rose by 22,000 in January, the light vehicle sales report for January from Wards Automotive, which estimated that vehicles sold at a 14.85 million seasonally adjusted annual rate in January, down from the 16.0 million annual sales rate reported in December, and down from the 15.60 million annual sales rate of January a year ago, and both of the widely followed manufacturing purchasing manager’s surveys from the Institute for Supply Management (ISM): the January Manufacturing Report On Business indicated that the manufacturing PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) rose to 52.6% in January, the highest PMI reading in 49 months, up from a revised 47.9% in December, with the above-50% reading indicating that a plurality of manufacturing purchasing managers reported improving conditions in various facets of their business in January for the first time in 12 months, and the January Services Report On Business, which saw the Services index fall to 53.8% in January, down from 54.4% in December, meaning that a smaller plurality of service industry purchasing managers reported improving conditions in various facets of their business in January than in December…

Job Openings Fell Sharply In December, Hiring and Layoffs Rose, Job Quitting Barely Changed

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) report for December from the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimated that seasonally adjusted job openings decreased by 386,000, from 6,928,000 in November to 6,542,000 in December, after November’s job openings were revised 218,000 lower, from 7,146,000 to 6,928,000….December’s jobs openings were also 12.9% lower than the 7,508,000 job openings reported for December a year ago, as the job opening ratio expressed as a percentage of the employed fell from 4.2% in November to 3.9% in December, and was also down from 4.5% in December a year ago…the finance and insurance sector, with a 120,000 job opening decrease to 138,000 openings, saw the largest percentage job openings decrease, while the real estate and rental and leasing sector saw job openings increase from 95,000 to 118,000 (see table 1 for more details)…like most BLS releases, the press release for this report is easy to understand and also refers us to the associated table for the data cited, which are linked to at the end of the text…

The JOLTS release also reports on labor turnover, which consists of hires and job separations, which in turn is further divided into layoffs and discharges, those who quit, and ‘other separations’, which includes retirements and deaths….in December, seasonally adjusted new hires totaled 5,293,000, up by 178,000 from the revised 5,121,000 who were hired or rehired in November, as the hiring rate as a percentage of all employed rose from 3.2% in November to 3.3% in December, but was still down from the 3.4% hiring rate in December a year earlier (details of hiring by sector since September are in table 2)….meanwhile, total separations rose by 38,000, from 5,231,000 in November to 5,251,000 in December, as the separations rate as a percentage of the employed remained rose from 3.2% in November to 3.3% in December, which was also up from the 3.2% separations rate in December a year ago (see table 3 for details)…subtracting the 5,231,000 total separations from the total new hires of 5,293,000 would imply an increase of 62,000 jobs in December, a bit more than the payroll job increase of 50,000 for December reported in the December establishment survey of a month ago, but well within the expected +/-110,000 margin of error in these incomplete survey extrapolations…

Breaking down the seasonally adjusted job separations, the BLS finds that 3,204,000 of us voluntarily quit our jobs in December, up by 11,000 from the revised 3,193,000 who quit their jobs in November, while the quits rate, widely watched as an indicator of worker confidence, remained at 2.0% of total employment, but was still up from 1.9% a year earlier (see details in table 4)….in addition to those who quit, 1,762,000 were either laid off, fired or otherwise discharged in December, up by 61,000 from the revised 1,701,000 who were discharged in November, as the discharges rate remained at 1.1% of all those who were employed during the month, which also matched the 1.1% the discharges rate of a year earlier (see details in table 5)….meanwhile, other separations, which includes retirements and deaths, were at 285,000 in December, up from 249,000 in November, for an ‘other separations rate’ of 0.2%, same as in November and as in December of last year….both seasonally adjusted and unadjusted details by industry and by region on hires and job separations, and on job quits and discharges can be accessed using the links to tables at the bottom of the press release…

(the above is the synopsis that accompanied my regular sunday morning news links emailing, which in turn was mostly selected from my weekly blog post on the global glass onion…if you’d be interested in receiving my weekly emailing of selected links, most of which are chosen from the aforementioned GGO posts, contact me…)