Glossary
JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey)
The BLS survey of US job openings, hires and separations. It is released at 10:00 New York time, roughly a month after the reference month ends.
JOLTS (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) is published monthly by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. It estimates job openings, hires and separations for the US. It is released at 10:00 New York time, roughly a month after the reference month ends, so it covers an earlier month than the jobs report that comes out around the same time.
Example
JOLTS for August 2026 was released on Tuesday, 29 September 2026. The Employment Situation report for August had come out on 4 September, so JOLTS described the same month 25 days later. With 7.2 million openings and 7.0 million unemployed, there would be 7.2 ÷ 7.0 ≈ 1.03 openings per unemployed person.
Why it matters
JOLTS measures demand for labour rather than employment itself. In our lab, the early-direction effect on gold after JOLTS and eight other US releases was positive until 2018 and negative in every year from 2020.