April’s Idaho hiring and quitting data shows new trends

When the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the March data from its State Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) on May 20, it looked like the rate of hiring and quitting in Idaho was settling into trends of fewer openings and hiring and more quitting. These trends were reflected in both the seasonally adjusted and the raw — or not-seasonally-adjusted — data. When BLS released the April data on June 29, all those trends went out the window.

Seasonally adjusted JOLTS data

In April, Idaho’s labor market had 56,000 job openings, a 9% decline since March. Some 43,000 workers were hired, and 29,000 workers quit. These numbers are seasonally adjusted. Seasonally-adjusted data is corrected for seasonal trends like summer hiring. Because Idaho’s labor force grew between February and April, it is more appropriate to look at hires and quits as rates instead.

BLS calculates the job opening rate “by dividing the number of job openings by the sum of employment and job openings and multiplying that quotient by 100.” Likewise, both the hiring and quitting rates are expressed as a percent of total employment.

The seasonally adjusted rates of workers hired or quitting their jobs in Idaho exceeded the national percentage by around 0.5 to 1.0 points every month since last summer. The job openings rate in Idaho exceeded the national percentage from October 2021 to March 2022. In April, the two switched places: the Idaho job opening rate was 6.4%, whereas nationally it was 7%. The Idaho and national job opening rates do invert occasionally, like they did in September 2021 and in April 2022.

Despite all the talk about the Great Resignation, the seasonally adjusted national trends have been flat since October 2021, with a steady job opening rate at 7% ± 0.2%. The national hiring rate since October has been 4.4% ± 0.1% and the national quitting rate since August has been 2.9% ± 0.1%. The data for Idaho are nowhere near as smooth, but that’s not unexpected given that smaller datasets are more sensitive to any noise in the data.

Not-seasonally-adjusted rates

Seasonal adjustment is based on both past data trends and computer modeling by the BLS. During an event like the pandemic, seasonal adjustment may not reflect trends in a meaningful manner because of the furloughs and layoffs of non-essential workers at times determined by COVID-19 surges and not by seasonal patterns. In such a case, it is useful to examine the raw data for an uncorrected and unmassaged look at labor trends, with the caveat that seasonal trends are included in the raw numbers.

The non-seasonally adjusted rates are interesting because they are all increasing between March and April, both nationally and in Idaho. Noteworthy is the inflection on the quits rate in February, where the rate switches from declining quits to increasing quits. This is also the approximate period when the Omicron COVID-19 variant was in retreat nationally and in Idaho.