Four Workers for Every Job

Catherine Rampell covers this in the New York Times Economix blog. The improving job numbers makes everyone think that we are out of the woods in terms of the economy. How far we have to go to get back to normal is still a big number. An indication of this is the number of jobless workers for every employment vacancy (this does not get into whether or not the jobless workers are appropriately skilled for the vacant jobs). The new, and improved number is: four jobless workers for each opening - still not good odds. This graph show this and puts it into historic relevance.