South By North Strategies, Ltd.

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

The total number of job openings in June was 3.1 million, and the total number of unemployed workers was 14.1 million (unemployment is from the Current Population Survey). The ratio of unemployed workers to job openings was thus 4.5-to-1 in June, an improvement from the revised May ratio of 4.6-to-1, but still extremely high.  By comparison, in December 2000 the job-seeker’s ratio was 1.1-to-1, and the highest this ratio ever got in the early 2000s downturn was 2.8-to-1.