Openings Came Back. Nobody's Quitting.
THE BEAM · JULY 23, 2026
Openings are up 707,000. Hires fell.
Job openings jumped 707,000 over March to May, back above 7.5 million, and the consensus machine did what it always does with a big round number, filed it under “labor demand is back” and slid it across the table to the hike case just in time for FOMC week. Fine. We keep staring at a different line, though. Over the exact same two months, hires fell 365,000. And the quits rate has now spent a full year at or below 2.0%, a level that basically only shows up late in the cycle, when workers have stopped believing the grass exists, let alone that it’s greener. One of these signals is lying.
From the Watch
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