A Cup of JOE (12/10)
Is the Job Opening Stability of 2025 Over?
Marissa Hashizume, NLx Research Hub Economist
December 10, 2025
Welcome to A Cup of JOE, a blog series. Each post will serve up fresh insights into U.S. job openings using the NLx Job Opening Estimator (NLx JOE) — a tool that blends federal government data with NLx Research Hub data and analytics to provide timely, detailed estimates of labor demand trends. Whether you’re a workforce professional, researcher, or just curious about employment opportunities, this series will keep you informed on interesting and emerging trends in labor demand, supporting data-driven decision-making and broader awareness of what is happening in the labor market.
Job openings were finally flattening out in the first part of this year after a steady decline over the past three years. The decline started in 2022 after the post-COVID peak in job openings that is associated with the “Great Resignation.” From January 2023 (10.7M openings) through the end of 2024 (7.5M openings), there was an average of approximately 140k fewer job openings each month. In comparison, this year, the average drop in monthly openings was only around 15k through October, showing a mostly flat trend. Fluctuations around the 7.5M mark were minimal, with the highest job opening count at around 7.7M at the beginning of this year and the lowest at 7.4M in July.
However, November saw a precipitous drop in job openings (200k) to 7.3M that appears to have broken the flat and stable trend of the earlier part of this year. November drops are not uncommon – the 2.8% reduction this year was similar to the 3.2% reduction from October to November last year and the 2.5% reduction in 2023. The difference in the past few years is that these drops were normal compared to other months in the year whereas this year has been relatively stable otherwise. It is possible things will pull back up in January as has happened in the past few years, and then the question will be what comes after. Regardless, November job openings did not maintain the stability that we saw earlier this year.
Job openings in all four U.S. regions have followed similar patterns over the past few years, from the steady decline in 2023 and 2024, to the leveling off in 2025, to the drop last month (November 2025). The West saw the largest decline in monthly job openings since January 2023, with a 39% drop (1.5M last month) compared to 31% in the Midwest (1.6M), and 29% in both the South and Northeast (2.9M and 1.3M, respectively). All four regions had job opening drops around 2-3% from October to November 2025, which were unusual compared to most of the rest of this year.
While all regions of the U.S. are in the same boat with the sudden drop in openings in November, a single month of data does not make or break a trend. It will be important to closely follow job openings in the coming months to see if 2025 was an anomalously stable year or if November was an anomalously bad month for job openings.
***A Cup of JOE examines job opening estimates from the NLx Job Opening Estimator (NLx JOE). Explore job opening numbers, see methodology notes, and more on NLx JOE, updated with new estimates monthly. Note that estimates from the most recent months are subject to minor revisions after additional federal data becomes available.***
