South By North Strategies, Ltd.

From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey …

The latest Bureau of Labor Statistics report on Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) shows that the number of new job openings decreased by 80,000 in October to 2.5 million. At the same time, however, the number of unemployed workers increased by 558,000 to 15.7 million. As a result, there were 13.2 million more unemployed workers than job openings in October, or 6.3 job seekers per available job …. Given the large number of job seekers per job opening, it is unsurprising that the jobless are getting stuck in unemployment for long periods and that the labor market is seeing record rates of long-term unemployment.