December has brought a small wave of positive news on the unemployment front--though much of it is better described as "less negative news."  Lest we get carried away by dips in the unemployment rate and jobless claims, Economic Policy Institute economist Heidi Shierholz reminds us that the conditions are not ripe for a major shift.  Shierholz points to the ratio of job seekers to available jobs, which remains above 4:1.

Shierholz:

To put this figure in context, it’s useful to note that the highest this ratio ever got in the early 2000s downturn was 2.8-to-1, and in December 2000, the month the JOLTS survey began, the ratio was 1.1-to-1. While the job-seekers ratio has been generally slowly improving since its peak of 6.9-to-1 in the summer of 2009, today’s data release marks two years and 10 months—147 weeks—that the ratio has been above 4-to-1. A job-seekers ratio of more than 4-to-1 means that for more than three out of four unemployed workers, there simply are no jobs. In October, there were 10.6 million more unemployed workers than job openings. Furthermore, the lack of job openings relative to unemployed workers is in no way limited to particular industries such as construction—unemployed workers dramatically outnumber job openings across the board, in every major industry.

Read the full post here.