Short answer: JOLTS (the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey) is a monthly US report on job openings, hires, quits and layoffs, released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics at 10:00 am New York time: 15:00 GMT and 20:30 IST in US winter time. Gold reacts to it mainly through Fed rate expectations: more openings and quits suggest a tight labour market and push towards higher rates, which tends to weigh on gold; fewer suggest cooling and tend to help it.
In practice the effect is small most months. Across the last 12 releases, gold’s average release-hour move in COMEX futures was $14.1 (0.31%), about the same as any other 10:00 am New York hour. Today, Tuesday 3 November 2026, the September report is due at 15:00 GMT, and our JOLTS event page shows the countdown in your own time zone.
What JOLTS actually measures
Each month the BLS surveys a sample of private businesses and government offices about their workforce. The report has four main parts:
| Measure | What it counts | Latest (August 2026) |
|---|---|---|
| Job openings | Positions open on the last business day of the month, which the employer is actively trying to fill | 7.079 million (rate 4.3%) |
| Hires | People added to the payroll during the month | 5.192 million (rate 3.3%) |
| Quits | People who left voluntarily | 3.066 million (rate 1.9%) |
| Layoffs and discharges | Separations started by the employer | 1.641 million (rate 1.0%) |
Total separations, which add quits, layoffs and other separations such as retirements, were 5.07 million. The figures above come from the BLS release of 29 September 2026; July openings were revised up by 64,000 to 7.3 million in the same release.
The rates matter as much as the levels. The openings rate is openings divided by employment plus openings; the other rates are divided by employment. They let you compare months even as the workforce grows.
Two things make JOLTS different from the other US labour data:
- It is older. The report published on 3 November covers September. By then the market already has September’s payrolls and will see October’s three days later.
- It measures demand for workers, not just jobs filled. Openings show how many people firms want to hire. When openings are far above the number of unemployed people, employers compete for staff and wages tend to rise.
Why gold traders watch a job openings survey
Gold pays no interest. When the market expects higher interest rates, the return on cash and Treasury bills rises and holding gold becomes relatively more expensive, which is why gold often falls when yields rise. Our gold vs real yields and dollar tool shows how closely the two have tracked each other.
JOLTS feeds that chain in three ways:
- Wage pressure. Many openings and a high quits rate mean workers have bargaining power. Wage growth feeds into services inflation, the part the Fed has found hardest to bring down.
- The Fed’s own attention. Openings compared with the number of unemployed people is a common way to judge how tight the labour market is, so traders read JOLTS as a hint of what the Fed is seeing.
- The rest of the week. JOLTS arrives a few days before the jobs report. A weak JOLTS can prime the market to expect a soft payrolls number, and the reverse.
In late 2026 the backdrop makes this sharper than usual. The Fed held its rate at 3.75-4.00% on 28 October with two votes for a hike, and futures still price roughly a 73-75% chance of a December hike. With inflation pushed up by oil, any sign that the labour market is still tight strengthens the hike case. Our December Fed hike odds guide explains how those probabilities are worked out.
JOLTS is a volatile, heavily revised series. The response rate to the survey is lower than for many other BLS releases, and each month’s openings figure is revised the next month. A single surprising print can be cut in half by the revision. Treat one month as a data point, not a trend.
JOLTS release time in your time zone
JOLTS is published at 10:00 am Eastern Time, usually on a Tuesday about five weeks after the reference month. The US clocks went back on Sunday 1 November 2026, so New York is now on UTC-5 until March.
| Location | Time zone | JOLTS time (US winter, Nov to Mar) | JOLTS time (US summer) |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York | ET | 10:00 | 10:00 |
| London | GMT / BST | 15:00 | 15:00 (BST) |
| Frankfurt, Paris | CET / CEST | 16:00 | 16:00 (CEST) |
| Dubai | GST | 19:00 | 18:00 |
| India | IST | 20:30 | 19:30 |
| Singapore, Hong Kong | SGT / HKT | 23:00 | 22:00 |
| Tokyo | JST | 00:00 (next day) | 23:00 |
| Sydney | AEDT / AEST | 02:00 (next day) | 00:00 (next day) |
The UK and Europe change clocks a week before the US, so for most of the year the London time stays at 15:00. For a few weeks in March, and the last week of October, the gap is one hour shorter. Our US clock change guide has the details, and the gold market hours tool shows the live session in your zone.
Upcoming JOLTS dates
| Release date | Data month | Time |
|---|---|---|
| Tuesday 3 November 2026 | September 2026 | 10:00 am ET (15:00 GMT) |
| Tuesday 1 December 2026 | October 2026 | 10:00 am ET (15:00 GMT) |
Both dates are on the BLS schedule. The September 2025 report was never published because of the US government shutdown that autumn, a reminder that release dates can change. The economic calendar is updated from the official schedules.
How gold reacted to the last 12 JOLTS releases
This table comes from our own hourly COMEX gold futures data (GC=F, 1-hour bars). The release hour is the bar that contains 10:00 am New York, measured from the previous hour’s close. The session runs from 6 pm New York the evening before to 5 pm on the day.
| Release (New York date) | Release-hour move | Release-hour range | Session move |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tue 29 Sep 2026 | +$12.2 (+0.29%) | $18.7 | +1.60% |
| Tue 1 Sep 2026 (with ISM manufacturing) | −$5.1 (−0.12%) | $22.8 | −2.70% |
| Tue 4 Aug 2026 | −$0.3 (−0.01%) | $18.0 | +0.57% |
| Tue 30 Jun 2026 | +$8.1 (+0.20%) | $38.6 | −0.22% |
| Tue 2 Jun 2026 | +$1.6 (+0.04%) | $17.4 | +0.10% |
| Tue 5 May 2026 (with ISM services) | +$3.5 (+0.08%) | $21.1 | +0.78% |
| Tue 31 Mar 2026 | −$8.6 (−0.19%) | $36.7 | +3.51% |
| Fri 13 Mar 2026 | −$61.7 (−1.21%) | $74.8 | −1.20% |
| Thu 5 Feb 2026 | −$29.2 (−0.60%) | $67.2 | −3.78% |
| Wed 7 Jan 2026 (with ISM services) | −$1.0 (−0.02%) | $29.6 | −0.86% |
| Tue 9 Dec 2025 | +$8.1 (+0.19%) | $27.6 | +0.40% |
| Tue 30 Sep 2025 | +$29.3 (+0.76%) | $33.6 | +0.64% |
What the numbers say:
- Average release-hour move: $14.1 (0.31%), ignoring direction, with an average high-low range of $33.8 in that hour.
- Direction was a coin toss: the release hour closed higher 6 times out of 12.
- The session mattered more than the hour. Gold moved 1.36% on average over the whole session, more than four times the release-hour move. Most of that came from other news the same day.
- Two outliers. The biggest release hours were 13 March 2026 (−$61.7) and 5 February 2026 (−$29.2). Both fell on days other than the usual Tuesday, while the BLS calendar was still out of its normal pattern, and other news may have shared the hour.
Is the JOLTS hour busier than normal?
To check, we measured every weekday 10:00-11:00 am New York hour from September 2025 to October 2026: 294 hours in all. The average absolute move was $14.7 (0.33%), with an average range of $33.5. In other words, the JOLTS hour has been no busier than a typical 10:00 am hour, which is already one of the more active hours of the day because many US releases come out then.
For comparison, the same last-12 tables on our event pages show:
| Release | Avg release-hour move | Avg release-hour range |
|---|---|---|
| NFP jobs report | $30.2 (0.70%) | $57.4 |
| JOLTS | $14.1 (0.31%) | $33.8 |
| ISM manufacturing PMI | $9.2 (0.21%) | $30.4 |
So JOLTS sits well below payrolls. That fits what you would expect: by the time JOLTS comes out, the market has already seen newer labour data. See the NFP event page and our NFP day study for the bigger event.
What to watch in tonight’s report
We do not publish consensus forecasts, because they come from commercial surveys, and we never guess them. Your calendar or news feed will show the expected figure shortly before the release. Here is what to compare it with.
- Openings against the forecast and the revised prior month. August’s 7.08 million was down from a revised 7.3 million in July. A second soft month would support the idea that labour demand is cooling, even with GDP growing 3.4% in Q3.
- The quits rate. At 1.9% it is low by recent standards. A move back above 2% would suggest workers are again confident enough to switch jobs, a lead indicator for wages.
- Layoffs. Layoffs and discharges were 1.64 million, a rate of 1.0%. A jump here would matter more for gold than a dip in openings, because it points to actual job losses.
- Revisions. The July figure was revised up by 64,000. A large upward revision to August can matter as much as the September headline.
- The wider week. ISM services follows on Wednesday and October payrolls on Friday 6 November at 13:30 GMT (19:00 IST). A JOLTS surprise often shows its full effect only once payrolls confirm or contradict it.
Three scenarios, without a forecast
| Scenario | What it would look like | Typical first read for gold |
|---|---|---|
| Hot | Openings well above forecast, quits rising | Hike odds up, yields and dollar firmer, gold under pressure |
| In line | Close to forecast, small revisions | Little reaction; attention moves to ISM and payrolls |
| Cold | Openings and quits fall, layoffs rise | Hike odds down, yields lower, gold tends to firm |
These are the usual first reactions, not rules. On election week, with oil swinging several per cent a day, other news can easily swamp a medium-impact report.
How to prepare (education, not a signal)
The goal around any release is to avoid being surprised by the clock or by the size of the candle. A simple routine:
- Know the time. Add the release to your calendar from the JOLTS event page; the .ics file includes a 15-minute reminder.
- Size for the hour. The average release-hour range was about $34. If your stop is closer than that, you are inside normal noise. The position size calculator shows the lot size that keeps your risk fixed with a wider stop. On a standard 100-ounce lot, a $34 range is worth $3,400.
- Decide before the number. Stand aside, reduce size, or wait 15 minutes for the first spike to settle. Pick one in advance; see the news trading strategy guide for the trade-offs, and news straddle risks for why pending orders on both sides can backfire.
- Expect wider spreads. Spreads often widen in the minutes around 10:00 am New York, especially when several releases share the minute.
- Write it down. Note what the number was, what gold did in the first hour and by the close. After a few months you will have your own view of how much JOLTS matters, which is worth more than any rule of thumb.
Worked example: what a JOLTS-sized move means for your account
Say you trade a $5,000 account and risk 1% ($50) per trade.
- With a $10 stop, 1% risk allows 0.05 lots (5 ounces): $10 x 5 oz = $50.
- A $34 release-hour range, the recent average, would cross that $10 stop in either direction more often than not.
- To keep the same $50 risk with a $35 stop, the size drops to about 0.014 lots (1.4 ounces), which most platforms round to 0.01 lots.
The numbers are illustrative, but the point holds for any account: around releases, the stop distance should come from the expected range, and the position size from the stop.
Prices can gap through stop orders in the release minute, so the loss on a stopped trade can be larger than planned. Leverage magnifies this. Never risk money you cannot afford to lose.
Common mistakes on JOLTS day
- Treating it like payrolls. The average reaction is less than half the NFP reaction. Sizing as if it were NFP can mean missing the real move on Friday.
- Reading only the headline. Quits and layoffs often say more about wages and the direction of the labour market.
- Ignoring revisions. A soft headline with a big upward revision to last month is not a soft report.
- Forgetting the clock change. In early November and March the release moves by an hour for anyone outside the US.
- Stacking events. When JOLTS shares the 10:00 am minute with an ISM report, the move is the combined reaction. Our event table marks those days.
Key takeaways
- JOLTS is a monthly US report on openings, hires, quits and layoffs, released at 10:00 am New York time (15:00 GMT, 20:30 IST in US winter).
- It reaches gold through Fed expectations, yields and the dollar: a tight labour market tends to weigh on gold, a cooling one tends to help.
- Gold’s average release-hour move was $14.1 (0.31%) over the last 12 releases, no more than a typical 10:00 am hour and about half the NFP reaction.
- Watch quits, layoffs and revisions, not just the headline openings figure.
- The next releases are 3 November and 1 December 2026.
For a calm routine on data days, the free gold trading starter kit includes a pre-news checklist, and the one-page study note on CPI, NFP and FOMC is a printable summary of the big three releases. Today’s gold news digest has the latest stories, and the weekly gold cheat sheet lists this week’s events and levels. The community is free during early access if you want to discuss data days with other traders: get free early access.
Sources
- August 2026 JOLTS figures, July revisions and the 3 November 2026 release date: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, JOLTS release of 29 September 2026
- JOLTS release archive and 2026 schedule: BLS JOLTS news release archive
- Fed decision of 28 October 2026 and December hike odds: Kitco, 2 November 2026; December hike odds: Trading Economics, 3 November 2026
- Release-hour and session statistics, and the 10:00 am baseline: XAUUSD Global calculation from COMEX gold futures (GC=F) 1-hour bars, September 2025 to October 2026, as shown on our gold event pages
Educational content only, not financial advice. Trading gold with leverage carries a high risk of loss.
Frequently asked questions
What time is the JOLTS report released?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes JOLTS at 10:00 am New York time. In US winter time, from early November to March, that is 15:00 GMT, 15:00 UK time, 20:30 IST and 23:00 in Singapore and Hong Kong. In US summer time it is one hour earlier in GMT (14:00 GMT, 19:30 IST).
Does JOLTS move gold?
Usually only a little. Across the last 12 releases in our COMEX gold hourly data, the average release-hour move was $14.1 (0.31%), about the same as an ordinary 10:00 am New York hour. The exceptions came when the numbers surprised strongly or arrived alongside other data.
Is a high JOLTS number good or bad for gold?
More openings and more quits point to a tight labour market and wage pressure, which can make the Fed less willing to ease or more willing to hike. That tends to lift yields and the dollar and weigh on gold in the short term. Falling openings and quits point the other way. What matters most is the gap between the number and what the market expected.
What is the quits rate and why does it matter?
The quits rate is the number of people who left their jobs voluntarily, as a share of total employment. Workers quit more when they are confident of finding a better-paid job, so a rising quits rate tends to come before faster wage growth. In August 2026 it was 1.9%, with 3.07 million quits.
What is the difference between JOLTS and the NFP jobs report?
NFP (non-farm payrolls) counts how many jobs were added in the previous month and is released about a week after the month ends. JOLTS measures openings, hires, quits and layoffs and covers the month before that, so it is roughly a month older. Gold usually reacts about twice as much to NFP: an average release-hour move of $30.2 against $14.1 for JOLTS in our last-12 tables.
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