The next jobs report is almost here. Here’s how to read it if you’re job hunting.

Want to know if it’s a good time to buy a home?

Check listings Zillow and look up the latest mortgage rates.

Want to know if it’s a good time to buy a car?

Browse cars online and check rates on auto loans.

But if you want to know whether it’s a good time to look for a job, things are more complicated.

You can scan job listings, but if you find five roles you seem qualified for, how much does that really tell you?

You don’t know how many people you’re competing with, how you stack up against them, or whether the company is even actively hiring for the role.

Perhaps you turn to economic data for an answer.

But depending on which numbers you look at, you can come away with very different impressions of how the job market is doing.

That’s something to keep in mind with the next monthly jobs report due Friday.

Headlines about the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ most recent August jobs report might have given job-seekers some hope.

The US added 162,000 jobs, far more than the 55,000 economists expected.

But that net growth doesn’t necessarily reflect a hiring boom.

Think of the labor market as a sink full of water, said Kory Kantenga, LinkedIn’s head of economics for the Americas.

The water level represents the number of people employed.

Water pouring in from the tap represents new hires, while water drains out of the sink via quits, layoffs, and retirements.

In today’s low-hire, low-fire labor market, the tap is running at a trickle — relatively few new jobs are pouring in.

Yet even fewer jobs are draining out, so the water level is still rising: The economy has added net jobs in nine of the past 12 months.

Hiring and quits have both slowed considerably, and layoffs are relatively low.

In other words, the rate of hiring can be low even while the economy adds jobs.

Knowing when the job market is or isn’t favorable can help workers decide whether to pursue a new job, switch careers, quit without another job lined up, or prepare for a potential layoff.

Kantenga said he believes there’s a “communications disconnect” between what job market statistics actually measure and how people sometimes interpret them. “The decisions that we are making today that are going to potentially affect us for the rest of our lives are based around our perception of how the labor market is today,” Kantenga said.

After her contract role at Microsoft ended in 2021, Dominique Alexander spent most of the next year trying to land a full-time position at the company.

Only later did she realize the hiring landscape had started to shift, making her focus on one employer a riskier strategy than she had thought. “I think I wasted a year of my life,” she said. “The company was laying people off, and I think hiring may have slowed more than I realized.” For job seekers, the hiring rate, which measures hires as a share of employment, offers a more direct look at the pace of hiring across the economy.

Over roughly the past year, the hiring rate has hovered near the lowest level since the Great Recession.

Still, the hiring rate has its limitations.

It reflects hiring across the entire economy, whereas most job seekers care about conditions in their particular field.

And the hiring rate doesn’t necessarily reflect companies growing their workforces.

A new hire who replaces an existing worker counts the same as one that increases a company’s headcount.

But for job seekers, both represent opportunities to move into a new job. “A marketing analyst, a warehouse worker, and a home health aide looking at the same national hires rate are experiencing fundamentally different job markets,” said Sneha Puri, an economist at Indeed Hiring Lab.

Government data can shed light on which industries have seen stronger job growth or hiring, but gauging the market for a particular occupation in a particular place gets trickier.

Jacob Zinkula writes about how workers are navigating their careers.

Share your story with him by filling out this form, emailing him, or reaching out via Signal at jzinkula.29.

No matter how closely you study the job market, there’s no way to know exactly how your own search will go.

But you can prepare for that uncertainty.

Nicholas Jenkins learned this lesson the hard way.

When he was placed on a performance improvement plan at Amazon, he began thinking about leaving the company.

Two months later, in late 2024, he accepted a termination package and left.

Jenkins expected he would simply “roll into a new job,” as he’d typically had little trouble finding work in the past.

Instead, he struggled to get any traction.

By then, hiring across the tech industry had slowed considerably from its early-pandemic boom. “I underestimated how tough the job market would be,” he said.

After five months of searching, he moved from Seattle to his hometown of Houston, where he hoped his strong network would improve his chances.

The next month, he landed a new role.

It may or may not be a good time for you to look for a job.

But Jenkins said he learned that it’s always a good time to invest in your network before you need it. “You need to get out there, shake hands, kiss babies, and cultivate relationships to build your next opportunity,” he said.

Reach out to the reporter via email at jzinkula@businessinsider.com, or via Signal at jzinkula.29.