Below, EPI senior economist Elise Gould offers her initial insights on today’s release of the Jobs and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) for May. Read the full Twitter thread here.

The layoffs rate continued to trend downwards while the hires rate softened and the quits rate fell. It’s clear the monthly data exhibits some volatility, but the labor market over the last few months continues to move in the right direction.
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— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) July 7, 2021

Using the last three months of data by sector to smooth data volatility, it’s clear that there are still many sectors with far more unemployment workers than job openings. To be clear, these comparisons only include those who are in the official measure of unemployment.
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— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) July 7, 2021

Today’s #JOLTS data are for May. What we know from the latest jobs report is that the labor market continued to pick up steam in June. Subsequent reports will show that this less optimistic report was a temporary blip on the way to a stronger economy.https://t.co/2bKFqKGWDA
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— Elise Gould (@eliselgould) July 7, 2021