Momentum continued to gather behind US workers’ hand at the bargaining table, as Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Tuesday showed that Americans are increasingly able to fill job vacancies.
The ratio of seasonally-adjusted unemployed Americans to the number of job openings in the private sector fell to 1.9 in December, according to the BLS data release.
The ratio, by The Sentinel’s measure, fell to its lowest point since November 2007, when it was last below two. On a year-over-year basis, the gauge fell by 1, from 2.9 in December 2013. It reached a post-recession high of 7.7 in October 2009, when the seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate peaked after last decade’s global financial meltdown.
Tuesday’s report of increasing labor scarcity in December comes on the heels of January employment data, released Friday by BLS, which showed upward pressure on wages. Average hourly earnings were up by 0.5 percent in January—the biggest one-month increase since late 2008.
But the labor market recovery hasn’t benefited Americans equally. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) noted in response to Friday’s report that the unemployment rate for African-Americans is almost twice the national average. And, as The Sentinel noted, average weekly earnings of non-supervisory wages increased by just $0.29 to $702.75 in January–gains totaling less than one-half of one-tenth of a percentage point.
There are other indications that the recovery windfall has been reaped mostly by richer Americans. The Census Bureau recently reported that over 16 million children were on food stamps last year–the highest number and percentage ever recorded.
And the last time the unemployment rate was roughly what it is now in the summer of 2008, the employment-to-population ratio was three percentage points higher, at 62.4 percent. In January, as the employment rate nudged up by 0.1 percent to 5.7 percent due to an increase in Americans joining the workforce, the employment-to-population ratio edged up to 59.3 percent.
