The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey for the month of February on Tuesday morning. While the look after the report may seem late, the reality is that we never analyze the so-called JOLTS report for real-time data. The Labor Department kept referring to the report as “little changed” in the opening versus the prior report. It turns out that the 5.133 million job openings was the highest number going all the way back to early in 2001.

This job openings report was also up 168,000 or so from the sequential report in January. Now compare the 5.1 million from February of 2015 to the same month of 2015, when the job openings level was roughly 4.2 million. The number of long-term unemployed, half a year, was 2.6 million people in March. This means that there are nearly twice as many job openings as there are people who have been unemployed for twenty-seven weeks or more.

Other numbers in the report may seem muted when you consider how bad the March payrolls were. Still, more job openings means more possibilities for advancement up the chain. The BLS gave other data as follows for February:

• Hires were 4.916 million.
• Separations were 4.650 million, and the quits rate was 1.9% and the layoffs and discharges rate was 1.1%.
• The job openings rate for February was 3.5%.
• No industries posted significant changes from January.
• Job openings increased in the Midwest region.

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The BLS further said:

Over the 12 months ending in February 2015, hires totaled 59.3 million and separations totaled 56.1 million, yielding a net employment gain of 3.2 million. These figures include workers who may have been hired and separated more than once during the year.

Again, the job openings and turnovers may seem very muted when you consider last Friday’s unemployment and payrolls report. After all, the report that total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 126,000 in March was far short of all estimates.

The trick that lies ahead is how to match up all of those long-term unemployed persons with the job openings. Due to skills, qualification requirements, geography and pay, that is a much deeper effort than simply saying there are twice as many openings as there are long-term unemployed persons.

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