Employers posted 7.5 million job openings in September, but they hired only 5.4 million people. Yet the number I'd circle if I ran an engineering team is quits: 3.4 million, up from 3.0 million in August, according to yesterday's JOLTS report.
I've spent the past week on layoffs, capex and hiring plans. This is the other side of the ledger, and it's the one that lands on your desk at 8 a.m. on a Monday when a senior engineer gives notice.
What the BLS reported
These figures are from the September 2026 JOLTS release on November 3, as summarized by JOLT Journal. They're rounded to the nearest hundred thousand and subject to revision.
Openings came in at 7.5 million (a 4.5% rate), with August revised to 7.2 million. Hires were 5.4 million (3.4%) against a revised 5.3 million in August, a change BLS called small. Quits reached 3.4 million (2.1%). JOLT Journal, citing Indeed Hiring Lab, calls it the first reading above 2% since June 2025, though BLS itself called the quits rate little changed. Layoffs and discharges held at 1.6 million (1.0%).
The same article calculates roughly 1.06 openings per unemployed worker, using 7.5 million openings and about 7.1 million unemployed from the September jobs report. That's its own math, not a BLS headline figure.
The caveat that matters
About half of the jump in quits came from accommodation and food services, up about 197,000. Nothing in the headline numbers tells me engineers are quitting in larger numbers. Don't read this as proof of an engineering exodus. It's one month of data, and JOLTS gets revised.
Why I'm still paying attention
Put the pieces side by side. Openings are climbing. Hires are flat at 5.4 million. Layoffs are steady. Yet more people are willing to quit. That's a market where employers keep posting jobs, don't fill them fast, and workers who had been sitting tight are starting to test the water.
Not everyone reads that as bad news. "It signals a labor market that is healthier, where workers have more mobility," Angela Hanks, chief of policy programs at the Century Foundation, told Marketplace.
Three things follow.
Open reqs are not hires. There were nearly 2.1 million more openings than hires in one month. Some of those are ghost postings, some are budget-frozen roles, and some are real jobs that sit open because the interview process takes eight weeks. If you count your own open reqs as a demand signal, you're counting the wrong thing.
Workers who stayed put because it felt unsafe are reassessing. Challenger's September report showed the fewest September job cuts since 2022 and the weakest September hiring plans since 2011. My read: employees have been sitting tight too, and a move in quits suggests some of them are done waiting.
Andy Challenger of Challenger, Gray & Christmas said the missing holiday hiring surge "suggests a very cautious approach," per CPA Practice Advisor.
Your best engineers are the ones recruiters call. Layoff-heavy headlines make leadership feel like talent is abundant. But the folks who get poached are never the ones in the layoff announcements.
What I'd do this week
- Run a retention check on your top ten engineers. Not a survey (nobody tells a survey they're interviewing). A conversation. Know who has been passed over for a raise. Know who's stuck on a legacy system. Find out who hasn't had a real project in a year.
- Fix your hiring clock. If your process takes eight weeks, you are losing candidates to companies that take three. Cut a round. Decide faster.
- Have a backfill plan before you need one. A resignation shouldn't mean a three-month hole in the project. A contract engineer can cover the gap while you run a proper search.
- Audit your open reqs. Close the ones nobody intends to fill. Candidates talk, and a pile of dead postings hurts your employer brand.
Where VC5 fits
We place engineers in hardware, software and manufacturing roles, contract and direct hire. When a key person leaves in the middle of a program, the fastest fix is usually a contract engineer who can start in weeks while you search for the permanent hire. If a resignation is already on your desk, call me.
Quits went up. Someone on your team noticed.
Phil Vanderslice is the founder of VC5 Partners, a technical staffing firm.