For Immediate Release: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Contact: Phoebe Silag or Karen Conner, news@epi.org 202-775-8810
This morning the Bureau of Labor Statistics released the June report from the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), showing that job openings held roughly steady in June (declining by 2,000), while downward revisions to earlier data reveal that there were 267,000 fewer jobs openings in May than previously reported. This means that the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings was 5.0-to-1, a slight improvement from the revised May ratio of 5.1-to-1. “There may be throngs of applicants for every job posting, since job seekers apply for multiple jobs,” explains EPI economist Heidi Shierholz. “The 5-to-1 ratio means that there is literally only one job opening for every five unemployed workers. That is, for every four out of five unemployed workers there simply are no jobs.”