Unflinching Figures for Labor Turnover

“Nothing endures but change,” wrote Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher.

When perusing the statistics for job openings and labor turnover the past month, it’s easy to think that there is no change.

It is up to a creative analyst to try to understand where flux is occurring within this seemingly predictable stagnancy of the U.S. economy.

Recruiters may wish to approach the figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics as a challenge.  Where can you see the changes that Heraclitus insists are present at all times?  Where is there evidence that everything flows and nothing stays fixed?

Over the month, the job openings rate was essentially unchanged in December 2010, at 2.3 percent (seasonally adjusted).

From November to December 2010, both the hires rate and the separations rate were also unchanged, at 3.2 percent each.

There were 4.2 million hires in December 2010, 9 percent higher than the most recent trough for this series, which occurred in June 2009.  This trough coincided with the official end of the most recent recession.

Despite the gains since June 2009, the number of hires in December remained below the 5.0 million hires when the recession began in December 2007.  Since their respective troughs, the hires level has risen at a slower pace than the job openings level.