NCES Blog

National Center for Education Statistics

Public State and Local Education Job Openings, Hires, and Separations for January 2023

As the primary statistical agency of the U.S. Department of Education, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) is mandated to report complete statistics on the condition of American education. While the condition of an education system is often assessed through indicators of achievement and attainment, NCES is also mandated to report on the conditions of the education workplace.

As such, NCES has reported timely information from schools. For example, this past December, NCES released data that indicated that public schools have experienced difficulty filling positions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.1 In order to understand the broader labor situation, NCES is utilizing the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey to describe the tightness of the job market.

JOLTS Design

The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), provides monthly estimates of job openings, hires, and total separations. The purpose of JOLTS data is to serve as demand-side indicators of labor shortages at the national level.2

The JOLTS program reports labor demand and turnover estimates by industry, including education.3 As such, this analysis focuses on the public state and local education industry (“state and local government education” as referred to by JOLTS),4 which includes all persons employed by public elementary and secondary school systems and postsecondary institutions.

The JOLTS program does not produce estimates by Standard Occupational Classification.5 When reviewing these findings, please note occupations6 within the public state and local education industry vary7 (e.g., teachers and instructional aides, administrators, cafeteria workers, transportation workers). Furthermore, as the JOLTS data are tabulated at the industry level, the estimates are inclusive of the elementary, secondary, and postsecondary education levels.

Analysis

In this blog post, we present selected estimates on the number and rate of job openings, hires, and total separations (quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations). The job openings rate is computed by dividing the number of job openings by the sum of employment and job openings. All other metric rates (hires, total separations, quits, layoffs and discharges, and other separations) are defined by taking the number of each metric and dividing it by employment. Fill rate is defined as the ratio of the number of hires to the number of job openings, and the churn rate is defined as the sum of the rate of hires and the rate of total separations.8


Table 1. Number of job openings, hires, and separations and net change in employment in public state and local education, in thousands: January 2020 through January 2023

*Significantly different from January 2023 (p < .05).
1 Net employment changes are calculated by taking the difference between the number of hires and the number of separations. When the number of hires exceeds the number of separations, employment rises—even if the number of hires is steady or declining. Conversely, when the number of hires is less than the number of separations, employment declines—even if the number of hires is steady or rising.
NOTE: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 2020–2023, based on data downloaded April 5, 2023, from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?jt.


Table 2. Rate of job openings, hires, and separations in public state and local education and fill and churn rates: January 2020 through January 2023

*Significantly different from January 2023 (p < .05).
NOTE: Data are not seasonally adjusted. Detail may not sum to totals because of rounding.
SOURCE: U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), 2020–2023, based on data downloaded April 5, 2023, from https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/dsrv?jt.


Overview of January 2023 Estimates

The number of job openings in public state and local education was 303,000 on the last business day of January 2023, which was higher than in January 2020 (239,000) (table 1). In percentage terms, 2.8 percent of jobs had openings in January 2023, which was higher than in January 2020 (2.2 percent) (table 2). The number of hires in public state and local education was 218,000 in January 2023, which was higher than in January 2020 (177,000) (table 1). This suggests there was a greater demand for public state and local education employees in January 2023 than before the pandemic (January 2020), and there were more people hired in January 2023 than before the pandemic (January 2020). The number of job openings at the end of January 2023 (303,000) was nearly 1.4 times the number of staff hired that month (218,000). In addition, the fill rate for that month was less than 1, which suggests a need for public state and local government education employees that was not being filled completely by January 2023.

The number of total separations in the state and local government education industry in January 2023 was not measurably different from the number of separations observed in January 2020 or January 2022. However, there was a higher number of total separations in January 2023 (127,000) than in January 2021 (57,000), which was nearly a year into the pandemic. In January 2023, the number of quits (76,000) was higher than the number of layoffs and discharges (36,000). Layoffs and discharges accounted for 28 percent of total separations in January 2023 (which was not measurably different from the percentage of layoffs and discharges out of total separations in January 2021), while quits accounted for 60 percent of total separations (which was not measurably different from the percentage of quits out of total separations in January 2021). These data suggest that there were similar distributions in the reasons behind the separations within the state and local government education industry between 2021 and 2023 in the month of January.

 

By Josue DeLaRosa, NCES

 


[1] U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics. Forty-Five Percent of Public Schools Operating Without a Full Teaching Staff in October, New NCES Data Show. Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://nces.ed.gov/whatsnew/press_releases/12_6_2022.asp.
 

[2] U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltover.htm.

[3] For more information about these estimates, see https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.tn.htm.

[4] JOLTS refers to this industry as state and local government education, which is designated as ID 92.

[5] For more information on the reliability of JOLTS estimates, see https://www.bls.gov/jlt/jltreliability.htm.

[6] North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is a system for classifying establishments (individual business locations) by type of economic activity. The Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) classifies all occupations for which work is performed for pay or profit. To learn more on the differences between NAICS and SOC, see https://www.census.gov/topics/employment/industry-occupation/about/faq.html.

[7] JOLTS data are establishment based, and there is no distinction between occupations within an industry. If a teacher and a school nurse were hired by an establishment coded as state and local government education, both would fall under that industry. (From email communication with JOLTS staff, April 7, 2023.)

[8] Skopovi, S., Calhoun, P., and Akinyooye, L. Job Openings and Labor Turnover Trends for States in 2020. Beyond the Numbers: Employment & Unemployment, 10(14). Retrieved March 28, 2023, from https://www.bls.gov/opub/btn/volume-10/jolts-2020-state-estimates.htm.

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