It should be no surprise that the job market has had some ups and downs during this pandemic, and one related measure is how long it has taken to fill an open position. FRED, with the help of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), gives us the tools to look into this. JOLTS, among other things, provides monthly data on the number of job openings and how many openings have been filled during that month. A simple ratio of these two numbers tells us how many months it takes to fill an open position, on average. And that’s exactly what we show in the FRED graph above. For example, in early 2011 (the start of ... (full story)