7.6 million. That's how many job openings the US economy was sitting on in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released this morning. It's a two-year high, and it blew past what economists expected — most forecasts called for openings to drop toward 7 million, not hold near the top of the range. On paper, that's a strong number. In practice, it's a strong number sitting on top of a labor market that still isn't moving much.
The headline: more openings than anyone predicted
Job openings came in at roughly 7.6 million for May, essentially flat from April's revised figure and up about 4% from a year earlier, when openings stood near 7.3 million. The data lands in the middle of the third month of the war with Iran, and just weeks after the Federal Reserve voted unanimously to hold interest rates steady, citing concerns about inflation creeping back up alongside a labor market that's been described as "low-hire, low-fire."
Hires held steady at 5.2 million for the month, and total separations were little changed at 5.1 million. Within that, quits came in at 3.1 million and layoffs and discharges held at 1.7 million, with the layoff rate edging up slightly to 1.1%.
| JOLTS metric | May 2026 | Trend |
|---|---|---|
| Job openings | ~7.6 million | Two-year high |
| Hires | 5.2 million | Unchanged |
| Quits | 3.1 million | Little changed |
| Quits rate | 1.9% | Near multi-year low |
| Layoffs & discharges | 1.7 million | Unchanged (rate up to 1.1%) |
The number that actually matters: nobody's quitting
Here's where I get skeptical of the "labor market is roaring back" headlines you'll see today. The quits rate — the share of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs, and the single best gauge of how confident people feel about finding something better — sat at just 1.9% in May. It's been stuck at or below 2% for almost a year, a long way from the 3% peak of the 2022 "Great Resignation" and below pre-pandemic norms.
Plenty of open positions, sure. But hires aren't rising to fill them, and workers aren't jumping ship to grab them either. That's not a labor market expanding — it's one where employers and employees are both standing still, each waiting to see what the other does next. The Conference Board's latest consumer confidence data backs this up: the share of people saying jobs are "hard to get" climbed to 22.5% in June, the highest since January 2021, even as the headline JOLTS number looked great.
What this means if you're freelancing
For freelancers, a "low-hire, low-fire" economy cuts both ways. On one hand, fewer people are getting laid off right now, which is good if you're relying on freelance income to supplement a day job. On the other, companies sitting on 7.6 million open roles without actually hiring for them is a classic sign of caution — and caution usually means budgets for contractors and freelance project work get squeezed before full-time headcount does, not after.
The more interesting read, in my opinion, is that uncertainty (tariffs, the Iran war, an unsettled Fed) tends to push companies toward flexible labor instead of permanent hires precisely because openings are easier to walk back than payroll. If that dynamic holds through the second half of 2026, it could mean more short-term contract work showing up on freelance platforms even while traditional hiring stays slow. Worth watching, not yet worth banking on.
Freelance income shifting with the market?
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