The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics ( BLS ) announced on Tuesday that job vacancies increased significantly in September, as did the number of people leaving their jobs, while recruitment increased and layoffs decreased.

In the monthly survey on the labor market vacancy and employee turnover, BLS reported that there were 7.52 million job vacancies in September, an increase of 333,000 from August, which is significantly higher than the market expectation of 7.15 million as cited in the Dow Jones survey.

Calculated based on the total labor force, the job vacancy rate has risen to 4.5%, an increase of 0.2 percentage points from last month. According to the "Job Vacancies and Labor Mobility Survey" ( JOLTS ), the increase in job vacancies mainly comes from manufacturing (an increase of 54,000), state and local governments (an increase of 108,000), and professional and business services (an increase of 106,000).

Meanwhile, the total number of employees who resigned voluntarily soared to 3.36 million, an increase of 321,000 from August, reaching the highest level since March 2025. Resignation is generally considered an indicator of employees' confidence in finding new jobs after leaving their current positions.

The number of new hires for the month increased by 131,000 to 5.4 million; the number of layoffs and dismissals decreased by 127,000 to 1.64 million, the lowest level since March 2025.

At the time of this report's release, the market is awaiting the non-farm payroll report for October, which BLS is scheduled to announce on Friday. Wall Street generally expects that the number of new jobs created in October will be 59,000, compared to only 29,000 in September; the unemployment rate is expected to remain at 4.2%.

Other economic data released on Tuesday also showed that manufacturing plant orders in September increased by 1.8% month-on-month, higher than the expected 1.3%, compared to just a 0.3% increase in August.