The Job Seekers Line is Getting Longer, In a Bad Economy

We often times only get to see the jobless numbers, currently at a high of 6.1 percent, instead of the even more important numbers of available jobs vs job seekers.

The Economic Policy Institute has the details:

This week's Snapshot by Heidi Shierholz highlighted the growing gap between jobs and workers. In Dec. 2006, there were 1.6 job seekers for every job, but by July that number had jumped to 2.6. The number of job openings is an important measure of employment that often gets overlooked. The number of job seekers per opening is now firmly in recessionary territory, and the August data will certainly be worse, Shierholz notes. The job openings data represent one more strong indicator of the need for a second stimulus package that is targeted directly at job creation.