Five unemployed workers for every job opening

December's numbers from the Labor Department point to an employment market in which companies no longer institute mass layoffs, but are still not ready for mass hirings. From Economix:

In July 2009, right after the recession officially ended, the ratio of unemployed workers to job openings peaked at 6.3. It has fallen since, to about 4.7 in both November and December of 2010. That's better, of course, but it's still historically high and doesn't provide much hope that the labor market can quickly absorb the nation's millions of idle workers.