JOLTS stands for Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The August 2011 statistics show there were 4.57 official unemployed people hunting for a job to every position available. There were only 3,056,000 job openings for August 2011, a drop of 4.89%, from the previous month of 3,213,000. For the 37th month, JOLTS again reflects an absolutely horrific jobs market. Below is the graph of number of official unemployed, 13.967 million, per job opening for August 2011.
If one takes the official broader definition of unemployment, or U6, in August at 16.2%, the ratio becomes even worse, 8.30* unemployed people per each job opening for August. Below is the graph of number of unemployed, using the broader U6 unemployment definition, per job opening.
