The February JOLTS Report Is In & The Hiring Rate Just Hit Its Lowest Point Since COVID
And this isn’t a one-month anomaly. Hires are down 387,000 compared to a year ago. The trend has been moving in this direction for months. February just accelerated it.
What makes this particularly telling is what happened alongside it. Job openings held steady at 6.9 million, essentially flat. So employers posted 6.9 million positions and filled 4.8 million of them. That gap between openings and actual hires keeps widening, and it raises a fair question: how many of those 6.9 million openings are real? Positions are being posted. Offers aren’t being made. Companies are looking (or at least appearing to look) without actually pulling the trigger.
On separations: quits came in at 3.0 million, a 1.9% rate, barely changed. Workers are staying put. The “great stay” we’ve been tracking across multiple data points is firmly intact. Total separations came in at 5.0 million, which means separations outpaced hires at 4.8 million. On a net basis, payrolls contracted in February. Layoffs and discharges held steady at 1.7 million overall, though retail saw a notable spike of 72,000 layoffs.
The hardest-hit sector across every metric was accommodation and food services. Openings dropped 211,000, hires fell 178,000, and quits declined 119,000. Every major indicator moved in the wrong direction for that industry in a single month.
Two additional details worth noting. Small businesses with one to nine employees saw their job openings rate decline while larger employers held steady; small firms tend to feel and react to economic pressure first, making that a leading indicator worth watching heading into the BLS jobs report on Friday. And January’s openings number was revised up by 294,000 to 7.2 million, which sounds positive until you realize it makes February’s flat reading look even softer by comparison.
The Cybersecurity Workforce Is Facing a Skills Crisis & So Is Every Other Industry
SANS’s 2026 Cybersecurity Workforce Research Report is technically sector-specific, but its findings read as a mirror for what’s happening across the broader labor market. When organizations were asked whether their biggest workforce challenge was finding enough people or finding people with the right skills, 60% said skills, and only 40% said headcount. A year ago, that split was nearly even. The gap went from 4 points to 20 in 12 months.
That shift matters well beyond cybersecurity. Employers across industries are dealing with the same dynamic: plenty of applicants, not enough people who can do what the job actually requires now. AI is a primary driver. Seventy-four percent of cybersecurity teams say AI is changing their team size and structure. About half report that AI is automating routine tasks and reducing manual work. Only 16% report actual job cuts; AI isn’t eliminating these roles outright, it’s changing what the roles require, and that’s creating a skills problem that hiring alone can’t solve.
The pattern that emerges is one we’ve been tracking throughout 2026: the entry-level jobs that used to train new workers are the ones AI handles most readily. So organizations skip development and go straight for senior talent. The result: 27% say expert roles are their hardest positions to fill, while only 4% say that about entry-level. That’s always been true to some degree, but the gap is compounding. Companies that aren’t building junior talent today are creating a pipeline problem that won’t show up fully for years, but will absolutely show up.
Career progression concerns tripled year over year in the SANS data. Only 24% of organizations have clearly defined career paths. That combination (AI automating the entry-level work, companies chasing experienced talent rather than developing it, and no visible path forward for people who do join) produces exactly the disengaged workforce the data keeps describing. People want to leave but can’t in this market, so they stay and check out instead. That’s not a talent strategy. It’s a slow-motion retention crisis.
Jay Bahalodia, a cybersecurity leader at Microsoft, quoted in the report, put the long-term stakes plainly: if an organization can’t develop people to operate the business, it isn’t a sustainable business. Long-term growth requires building the people who will eventually replace you. That’s the principle being ignored across industries right now, and the SANS data is one more piece of evidence for why that has to change. If you’re building a team and want to approach it differently, the data is pointing in a clear direction.
Staffing your team doesn’t have to be hard.
Reach out and see how we can help.
Frequently Asked Questions
The hiring rate fell to 3.1% in February, the lowest since April 2020. Hires dropped to 4.8 million, down nearly 500,000 from January, while job openings held nearly flat at 6.9 million. Employers are posting positions but not filling them.
When separations exceed hires, payrolls contract on a net basis; the economy loses more employed workers than it gains. February’s 5.0 million separations against 4.8 million hires means the labor market shrank slightly, even without a spike in layoffs.
The “great stay” refers to workers holding on to their current jobs rather than voluntarily quitting, the reverse of the great resignation. February’s 1.9% quits rate confirms it’s still the dominant pattern, driven largely by workers’ lack of confidence that the job market will offer them something better.
When 60% of organizations cite skills gaps (not headcount) as their primary workforce challenge, the problem isn’t a recruiting problem; it’s a development one. Organizations that aren’t building defined career paths and investing in junior talent are compounding a shortage that gets harder to reverse the longer it’s ignored.
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February 2026 JOLTS Report: Hires drop to 4.8 million, lowest rate since April 2020
Welcome back to Cornering the Job Market. There is one huge headline today, so I’m going to just get right to it. The BLS just released a February Jolts report, and the hiring number is the worst we’ve seen since the early days of the pandemic. Hires dropped to 4.8 million in February. That is down $498,000 in a single month. The hires rate fell to 3.1%, and that is the lowest hires rate since April 2020. April 2020, that was the early days of COVID when the economy was quite literally shutting down.
We don’t have that kind of crisis happening right now, but the pace of actual hiring has slowed to that level. And this isn’t a one-month blip either. Hires are down 387,000 compared to a year ago. The trend has been moving in this direction for months, and now it’s just been accelerated. Meanwhile, job openings held steady at 6.9 million, which is a really telling disconnect when you think about what those two numbers mean together. Employers posted 6.9 million jobs, but only filled 4.8 million. The gap between openings and hires keeps getting wider. Positions are posted, but companies aren’t pulling the trigger on actual offers. It makes you wonder how many of those job openings are real in the first place.
On the separation side, quits didn’t change much. They came in at 3 million, which is a 1.9% rate. So it tells us workers are staying put and the great stay is very much in effect. Total separations came in at $5 million, which means they outpaced hires that were only at $4.8 million. So on a net basis, payrolls contracted during February. Layoffs and discharges held steady at $1.7 million, but retail saw a notable spike with $72,000 layoffs. The sector that got hit the hardest across the board was accommodation and food services. Openings dropped$211,000, hires fell$178,000, and quits declined$119,000. Every major metric moved in the wrong direction for that industry.
There’s one more detail worth flagging. Small businesses with one to nine employees saw their job openings rate decline while larger employers held steady. Small firms tend to feel economic pressure first and react first. So that is a leading indicator worth watching. January’s numbers were also revised. Job openings were revised up by 294,000 to 7.2 million. So that sounds good on the surface, but it makes February’s flat reading look even softer by comparison. The headline on the JOLTS report is usually about openings, but the story today is all about hires. This is a record scratch moment when you see that we are experiencing the worst hiring rate since COVID. There is no way around acknowledging that we are in an awful job market right now.
So we see a widening gap between jobs posted and jobs filled, workers are too cautious to quit, separations are outpacing hires. So it’s a bad time to be a job seeker right now. And look, you probably know that already if you’re in the job market, none of this should be a surprise to you. It’s just confirming what you’re already experiencing in all likelihood. Now, tomorrow we have ADP’s employment report coming out, and then we’ll get the BLS Jobs Report on Friday. I’ll be watching both closely and we’ll share the data as soon as it is available.
SANS 2026 Cybersecurity Workforce Report: Skills gaps now dominate over headcount
There’s just one other story worth touching on today. SANS just released their 2026 Cybersecurity Workforce Research Report. And while the findings are specific to that industry, the patterns apply everywhere. When organizations were asked what’s their biggest workforce problem, finding enough people or finding people with the right skills, 60% said skills. Only 40% said headcount. A year ago that was nearly even. The gap went from four points to 20 in the past 12 months. That shift matters well beyond cybersecurity because employers across industries are seeing the same thing.
They have lots of applicants, but what they lack is people who can do what the job now requires. That shifted. AI is a big reason why. 74% of cybersecurity teams say AI is changing their team size and structure. About half report that AI is automating routine tasks and cutting down on manual work. Only 16% report actual job cuts. AI isn’t eliminating these jobs, it’s changing what the jobs require, and that’s creating a skills problem that hiring alone can’t solve. This is a story we see repeated over and over, so it probably sounds familiar to you by now. The entry-level jobs that used to train new workers are the ones AI handles best, so companies are skipping development and going straight to senior level talent. 27% say expert roles are the hardest to fill. Now that’s always been the case.
Only 4% say that about entry level. Again, same thing. Entry-level jobs compared to expert level jobs are always much easier. But this is this is becoming a pattern where companies aren’t looking to find entry-level talent. And that’s creating a problem, not just today for young people, but a problem that is going to linger for decades to come if we’re not developing young professionals. I mean, that is a real problem. Also, career progression concerns triple year over year, and only 24% of organizations have clearly defined career paths. That is something else we see becoming a trend. It is a trend at this point. It’s a growing trend where companies just aren’t focused enough on their young professionals.
So that’s it’s a bad cycle we’re in. AI is automating entry-level jobs, companies chase experience talent instead of building it. And senior talent takes a long time to find. We know that. So we continue to see a lot of jobs not being filled because companies are looking looking for those perfect hires, what I often refer to as a Goldilocks hire. And when people inside an organization don’t see a path forward, all the data shows that they’re going to start checking out they’d like to leave right now, but they can’t. And so this is just a disengaged workforce that we end up with. So while this is just about cybersecurity, as I said earlier, this is data we keep seeing repeated over and over lately in almost every report. Jay Belodia from Microsoft put it simply. He said, if we can’t develop people to operate the business, then it’s not a sustainable business. Long-term growth means I need to build the people to replace me. I believe that perfectly sums up the message here. So we will close on that today.
Now, I want to be optimistic and hope for some better numbers later this week. We have ADP payroll report coming out tomorrow. That shows what private employers are doing, and then we have the big jobs report on Friday. I’ll look forward to talking about all of that and fingers crossed for some better news.
Fun fact: The elevator pitch was named after the elevator ride it should fit into
But here’s a fun fact before I say goodbye. The elevator pitch was named because you should be able to finish it in the time of a single ride. On an elevator, of course. It’s a common thing in sales. You gotta have your elevator pitch down, right? You have to be prepared to explain your product, service, offering, whatever it is, in just a few seconds. So the time you’d be on an elevator. So that is finally it for today. Thank you for listening. Please like, subscribe, share with anyone who you think might be interested, and I will look forward to talking to you tomorrow.
