Total private

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), the Total private sector reported 176 job openings nationally during Dec 2025, paired with 76 hires and 60 total separations in the same month. The openings rate stood at 3.9% and the hires rate at 1.8%, meaning the sector filled roughly 43% of posted positions during the reference month. A fill ratio well below 100% indicates openings outpacing hires — a durable signal of structural labor demand rather than temporary seasonal tightness. These figures measure the national aggregate for the sector, computed by BLS from the JOLTS establishment survey and benchmarked to Current Employment Statistics estimates; they do not include self-employed workers or agricultural employment.

Turnover dynamics tell the deeper story: Total private recorded 33 voluntary quits (0.8% quits rate) and 20 layoffs and discharges in Dec 2025, for a combined separations rate of 1.4%. The quits rate — the single most-watched JOLTS metric — captures worker confidence: at current levels, it sits below the historical norm, which typically accompanies weaker outside options or sector-specific uncertainty. With quits (33) exceeding layoffs (20), employee-initiated separations dominate — the pattern associated with a worker-friendly labor market.

Geographic concentration matters for anyone interpreting these aggregates: state-level rankings in the table below show where sector demand concentrates. Versus the same month a year earlier, Total private openings contracted 14.6% — a double-digit decline of a magnitude historically associated with early-stage sector cooling. Every number on this page comes directly from the BLS JOLTS public dataset for Dec 2025; no extrapolations are applied.