JTSHIL: US Total Hires Monthly JOLTS Level from FRED (2000–2026)

The US Hires series counts total nonfarm hires completed each month, from the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) — monthly since December 2000. It is the realized side of labor demand: openings measure intent, hires measure matches actually made. The series bottomed at 3.6 million in June 2009, spiked to a mechanical record of 8.1 million in May 2020 (reopening rehires), and ran at 5.2 million in mid-2026 — below its 2019 average of 5.8 million.

Dataset: US Hires — JOLTS (2000–2026) · Updated 2026-05-01

Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS · FRED series JTSHIL

Macro Takeaway

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.

A value of 5,170 means 5.17 million hires completed during the month.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

FRED Direct CSV Access

The underlying data is available from FRED under series code JTSHIL:

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=JTSHIL

Direct CSV Access — Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-hires.csv

This URL returns the complete dataset in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-hires.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(f"Latest: {df['hires'].iloc[-1]/1000:.2f} million hires/month")
print(df.tail())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/us-hires.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

tail(df)
summary(df$hires)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL — no download or API key required.

Methodology

In JOLTS, a hire is any addition to the payroll during the reference month — new hires, rehires, recalls from layoff, and transfers from other locations. It is a flow over the month, unlike job openings (a stock on the last business day). The survey covers roughly 21,000 nonfarm establishments.

The level series (thousands) is served here; the BLS also publishes a hires rate (hires as a percent of employment), which historically runs near 3.8–4% in expansions.

This dataset is updated daily (Mon–Sat, 08:00 UTC) via automated pull from the FRED API; new observations appear with each source release.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

• Release latency. JOLTS publishes ~5 weeks after the reference month, one month behind payrolls.
• Revisions policy. Prior month revised each release; annual benchmarking adjusts recent years. Swings of 100–200k are within revision noise.
• Response rate. JOLTS response rates roughly halved after 2020 (~60% to ~30%), widening confidence intervals on single prints.
• Reopening artifacts. May–June 2020 record highs (8.1M) are recalls from temporary layoff, not underlying labor demand — flag them in any historical comparison.
• Known gaps. None; continuous since December 2000.

Common Pitfalls When Using Hires

1. Confusing gross hires with net job creation. 5.2 million hires in a month does not mean 5.2 million new jobs — separations run nearly as large. Net change is the payrolls report; hires measure churn.
2. Treating the 2020 spike as strength. The all-time high (8,133k, May 2020) is a mechanical rebound of recalls after 13 million pandemic separations. Excluding 2020, the series has never printed above ~6.9 million.
3. Ignoring the openings pairing. Hires per opening collapsed after 2021; reading either series alone misses whether postings are converting into matches.
4. Level vs rate. Employment grew ~20% over the series’ life; cross-decade comparisons of the level overstate today’s churn. The hires rate is the normalized measure.

Historical Regimes

2001–2007 — The 5-million norm. Hires ran between 4.8 and 5.5 million monthly through the dot-com aftermath and mid-cycle expansion — the baseline churn of a ~135-million-job economy.

2008–2009 — Frozen matching. Hires fell to the series trough of 3.64 million (June 2009): the defining feature of the GFC labor market was not only layoffs but a hiring freeze that stranded the unemployed.

2010–2019 — The slow thaw. A near-decade climb back to a 5.8 million average in 2019, tracking the openings recovery with a lag.

2020 — Collapse and recall. Hires fell to 4.0 million in April 2020, then spiked to 8.1 million in May as recalls from temporary layoff flooded the flow — both prints are pandemic mechanics, not trend.

2021–2022 — Churn boom. The Great Resignation was two-sided: quits at 3.0% fed hires peaking at 6.9 million (November 2021) as workers reshuffled across employers at record pace.

2023–2026 — The Big Stay. Hires cooled below the 2019 norm to 5.2 million by mid-2026 while layoffs stayed historically low — adjustment through reduced hiring rather than firing, the signature of the post-tightening labor market.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

Hires are one of four JOLTS flows; the series below complete the churn picture and its net outcome.

Macroeconomic Dataset Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.

Sources

• US Bureau of Labor Statistics — Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS)
• Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis — FRED series JTSHIL

Dataset Reference