Restaurant Job Openings

Job openings in the restaurant and lodging sector declined from 985,000 in October to 837,000 in November, continuing a pattern of significant month-to-month volatility. Year to date, openings have averaged 908,000 through the first 11 months of 2025, slightly above the 2024 monthly average of 889,000. Even with a notable decrease in November, these data suggest a degree of resilience in labor demand for restaurants and lodging despite broader economic uncertainties and signs of a softening labor market overall. Indeed, foodservices and accommodations job openings averaged 835,000 per month in the 2017 to 2019 time period, putting the current level near pre-pandemic levels.

Net hiring continued to be weak in November, consistent with a cooling labor market. Hiring eased from 792,000, but separations jumped to 808,000, a 5-month high. As such, net hiring—or hires minus separations—was -16,000 in November, pulling back after three months of solid gains.

The hiring level averaged 895,000 per month between 2017 and 2019, with separations averaging 875,000 in those pre-pandemic years. Through the first 11 months of 2025, the monthly average was 796,000 for hires and 773,000 for separations, both notably below pre-pandemic levels.
 

The increase in separations was led by a sharp rise in quits, reversing the normalization seen since the previous run-up earlier in the year. In November, quits in the accommodation and foodservice industry surged to 694,000, the highest since June. Likewise, but to a lesser extent, quits for all nonfarm sectors rose to 3.16 million in November, a 4-month high.

These upticks in quits in November are curious, and we will see if future data return to the normalization seen in recent months. Recent data have been consistent with the transition from the “Great Resignation” prevalent a few years ago to the current “Great Stay” period, which has been closer to pre-pandemic trends. For comparison, quits averaged 4.22 million for nonfarm payrolls and 787,000 for restaurants and lodging in 2022, when the labor market was historically tight and businesses struggled to find sufficient workers. Year-to-date, quits have averaged 3.19 million and 611,000, respectively.
 

U.S. nonfarm business job openings totaled 7.16 million in November, the lowest since December 2020. Meanwhile, there were 7.83 million unemployed individuals in November, the most since August 2021. Again, this is consistent with softening in the labor market. More importantly, it was the third time in the past four months that the number of unemployed workers exceeded available job openings, with a gap of 685,000 workers. There are currently 1.1 unemployed workers for every one job opening, which should make it easier for restaurants to find candidates.

For perspective, the labor market was considerably tighter in July 2022, when job openings outnumbered unemployed individuals by 2-to-1. At that time, there were just 49.7 unemployed workers for every 100 job openings, with a surplus of more than 5.84 million job postings relative to job seekers.