4.5 job hunters for every job opening in May

The number of available jobs in the U.S. as of June 30 was about 3.1 million, a slight increase from May when there were 3 million, according to the U.S. Department of Labor's monthly openings and Labor Turnover Survey released today.

Compared to June 2010, job openings rose 16 percent. To put this in more perspective, these numbers were much better than the 2.1 million job openings in July 2009, the lowest total number of available jobs since the government began recording the data 10 years ago. But things are pretty lousy compared to December 2007 before the recession began when there were 4.4 million available jobs.

With about 14.09 million people unemployed in June, there were nearly 4.5 potential job seekers for each opening, down from about 4.6 in May. Of the total jobs in June, only 2.3 percent were considered by employers to be vacant and likely to be filled within 30 days, which is why it's so hard to for unemployed people to find work. More...