Slow gains are still gains

From the Economic Policy Institute:

The total number of job openings fell slightly to 5.0 million in March and the number of unemployed workers fell slightly to 8.6 million. Taken together, the result was a job-seekers-to-job-openings ratio that held steady at 1.7. This ratio has been declining steadily from its high of 6.8-to-1 in July 2009, as shown in the figure below.

job_seekers_ratio

Another indicator:  The employment-to-population ratio for 25-to-54-year-olds has been increasing slowly but steadily.  It’s well below peak but it’s substantially better than post-crash:

latest_numbers_LNS12300060_1990_2015_all_period_M04_data

(Sorry for the ugly graph.)