Advertised job openings rise 128,000 in month

12/12/2012

WASHINGTON — Job openings advertised to 3.68 million in October, an increase of 128,000 from September, the Labor Department said Tuesday. The number is the highest since June.

The number of available jobs is slowly climbing back toward the roughly 4 million that were advertised each month before the recession began in December, 2007.

With nearly 12.3 million people unemployed in October, 3.3 unemployed people, on average, were competing for each open job. That’s the lowest ratio since November 2008. In a healthy economy, the ratio is roughly 2 to 1.