For Immediate Release: Wednesday, December 11, 2012
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Donte Donald, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

Job-seekers ratio continues slow improvement

October’s job-seekers ratio, the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings, ticked down slightly in October to 3.3-to-1 from the September ratio of 3.4-to-1. In her analysis, EPI economist Heidi Shierholz explains that the primary concern in the labor market remains hiring. Hires increased by 135,000 in October, but that was simply a partial rebound from the large drop in September; hires have made no progress since the first quarter of this year. This lack of progress is bad news because there is a long way to go before hiring returns to healthy levels, as it remains 16.4 percent below its 2007 average.

###