South By North Strategies, Ltd.

From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the July version of the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) …

The July Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey(JOLTS), released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, underscores the slow nature of the recovery. At 3.7 million, job openings in July were little changed from June. The number of unemployed workers in July was 12.8 million (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey and can be found here), meaning that the “job-seekers ratio”—the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings—was 3.5-to-1. This is a slight increase from the 3.4-to-1 ratio in June.
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While the ratio has been generally improving since reaching its peak of 6.7-to-1 in summer 2009, the odds are still stacked strongly against job seekers; the job-seekers ratio has been at 3-to-1 or above since September 2008. A job-seekers ratio above 3-to-1 means that there are simply no jobs for more than two out of three unemployed workers.