South By North Strategies, Ltd.

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

The August Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, underscores the slow-but-steady nature of the recovery. At 3.6 million, job openings in August changed little from July (down 32,000). However, the number of unemployed workers dropped 250,000 in August to 12.5 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—declined slightly to 3.5-to-1 from the revised July ratio of 3.6-to-1.
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Because the job openings data are for August, they do not take into account the September drop in unemployment announced in last Friday’s jobs report, which showed the number of unemployed workers declining by 456,000. This drop means the job-seekers ratio likely declined further in September; for example, if the number of job openings simply changed in September by the average change of the prior three months (-32,000), the job-seekers ratio will have dropped to 3.4-to-1, continuing the improvement the ratio has been experiencing over the last three years. Despite this improvement, odds remain stacked against job seekers; the ratio has been 3-to-1 or greater since Sept. 2008.