Unemployed Still Outnumber Job Openings 3-to-1

The September Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, showed job openings declined in September by 100,000, to 3.6 million. On the other hand, the number of unemployed workers dropped 456,000 in September to 12.1 million (unemployment data are from the Current Population Survey and can be found here). Taken together, this means the “job-seekers ratio”—the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings—was unchanged in September from the revised August ratio of 3.4-to-1.