There Are Now 1 Million More Unemployed People Than Available Jobs. Here’s What That Means for You.

The Gap Nobody’s Talking About

For years, the story of the American labor market was one of abundance. Employers were desperate. Job openings outnumbered unemployed workers by a wide margin. Workers held the cards.

That story is over.

New data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics JOLTS report reveals that as of December 2025, there were roughly 1 million more unemployed people than available job openings in the U.S. That’s the widest gap (outside of the pandemic) since 2017, and it represents a seismic shift in who holds the power in today’s job market.

Here’s the raw math: 7.5 million Americans are actively looking for work. Only 6.5 million positions are available for them. That means nearly 1 million job seekers are competing for jobs that simply don’t exist.

This isn’t a blip. Job openings have been falling steadily for months, dropping by more than 900,000 from October to December alone. And the latest annual benchmark revisions from the BLS just confirmed that 2025 was the worst year for hiring outside of a recession since 2003.

By the end of this article, you’ll understand exactly how the labor market shifted, which sectors are feeling it most, and what the data tells us about where things go from here.

From 2 Jobs Per Worker to Less Than 1

To understand how dramatic this reversal is, you need to see the full arc.

In March 2022, at the height of the post-pandemic hiring frenzy, there were roughly 2 job openings for every unemployed person in America. Employers couldn’t hire fast enough. Workers were quitting in record numbers during the “Great Resignation,” confident they’d land something better within weeks.

Today, that ratio has collapsed to 0.87 jobs per unemployed worker. According to Advisor Perspectives’ analysis of JOLTS data, this is the lowest level since February 2021, when the economy was still recovering from COVID shutdowns.

Here’s what the trajectory looks like:

• March 2022: 2.0 job openings per unemployed worker (12 million openings, 6 million unemployed)
• December 2024: 1.1 job openings per unemployed worker
• December 2025: 0.87 job openings per unemployed worker (6.5 million openings, 7.5 million unemployed)

That’s not a gradual cooling. That’s a complete power shift from workers to employers in under three years.

The job openings rate itself fell to 3.9% in December, down from 4.5% a year earlier. Outside of the pandemic, the last time it was that low was 2017. And while the 2017 economy was growing and hiring, today’s economy is marked by caution, uncertainty, and an ongoing hiring slowdown that shows no signs of reversing quickly.

Interview Guys Take: This data point is one of the single most important labor market indicators that exists. When there are more unemployed people than open positions, employers gain leverage on everything: salaries, benefits, remote work policies, and interview expectations. If you’ve noticed job searches feeling harder, the offers feeling lower, or the process feeling longer, this is the number that explains it all.

The Sectors Getting Hit Hardest

The decline in job openings isn’t spread evenly. Some industries are experiencing sharp contractions that are reshaping entire career paths.

According to the December 2025 JOLTS data, here are the sectors with the steepest drops:

• Professional and business services: Down 257,000 openings in December alone (a 21.8% decline in recent months)
• Retail trade: Down 195,000 openings in a single month
• Finance and insurance: Down 120,000 openings (a 25.1% decline since October)
• Healthcare and social assistance: Down 152,000 openings since October (10.8% decline)

That last one deserves special attention. Healthcare has been the one bright spot keeping the entire labor market afloat. In January 2026, healthcare and social assistance accounted for roughly 95% of all private sector job gains. If that sector starts pulling back on openings too, the floor could drop out.

The white-collar recession is real. Professional services and finance are two of the hardest-hit categories. These are the jobs that typically require degrees, offer salaries above the national median, and provide career trajectories that many workers planned their lives around.

For anyone targeting these industries, the numbers tell a clear story: competition for remaining positions is going to be fierce. This is exactly the kind of environment where tailoring your resume to each specific role matters more than ever.

Interview Guys Take: When openings in professional services drop by over 20% in a matter of weeks, that’s not seasonal fluctuation. It signals that companies are rethinking headcount at a structural level. If your industry is on this list, it doesn’t mean you should panic. But it does mean your job search needs to be sharper, more targeted, and more strategic than it would be in a healthy market.

The “Great Stay” Is Now the “Great Freeze”

One of the most telling indicators in the JOLTS data isn’t about job openings at all. It’s about quits.

The quits rate, which measures the share of workers voluntarily leaving their jobs each month, has essentially flatlined at around 2%. That’s below pre-pandemic levels and, according to the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis, represents the kind of worker immobility we haven’t seen regularly since 2016.

To put it simply: people are staying in jobs they don’t like because they’re afraid of what’s on the other side.

The numbers paint a grim picture of worker confidence:

• Quits rate: 2.0% (unchanged in December, stuck below pre-pandemic norms)
• Hires rate: 3.3% (similar to levels seen in 2013 during the post-recession recovery)
• Only 29% of workers said they planned to search for a new job in the first half of 2026, according to Robert Half research, down from 35% in mid-2024

This is what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” market. Employers aren’t laying off in massive numbers (the layoff rate stayed at 1.1%), but they’re also not hiring. Workers aren’t getting fired, but they’re not finding new opportunities either.

The result is a kind of labor market paralysis where everybody stays put, nobody’s happy, and very little changes. As Indeed’s Hiring Lab described it in their analysis: the market spent much of 2025 “bending, but not breaking,” and ended the year “perilously close to a definitive breaking point.”

If you’ve been feeling stuck in a role that isn’t growing or a company that isn’t promoting, you’re not alone. The data confirms that worker mobility has essentially frozen.

What 2025’s Revisions Reveal About the Real Job Market

If the JOLTS data wasn’t sobering enough, the latest BLS benchmark revisions (released February 11, 2026) added another layer of concern.

The U.S. economy added just 181,000 jobs in all of 2025. That’s an average of 15,000 per month, down from the originally reported 584,000. It’s the weakest year for job creation outside of a recession since 2003.

Here’s context for how significant that revision is:

• 2024 total jobs added: 1.5 million (also revised down from 2 million)
• 2025 total jobs added: 181,000
• 2025 monthly average: 15,000 jobs
• Jobs removed in benchmark revision: 862,000 (from April 2024 through March 2025)

The economy actually contracted in four months of 2025: January, June, August, and October. The labor market didn’t just slow down last year. In many months, it moved backward.

January 2026 offered a bit of hope, with 130,000 jobs added (beating expectations of 55,000). But even that gain was almost entirely driven by a single sector. Healthcare and social assistance accounted for 123,500 of the 172,000 private sector additions.

Interview Guys Take: When 95% of private sector job growth comes from one industry, that’s not a broad recovery. It’s a one-engine plane. If you’re job searching in anything outside of healthcare, the competition math hasn’t changed much. Your application is likely competing against a larger pool of candidates for fewer available roles, which means standing out in the application process is no longer optional.

What This All Means Going Forward

The 1 million person gap between unemployed workers and available jobs isn’t just a statistic. It’s a market signal with real consequences for how companies hire, how they negotiate, and how long they take to make decisions.

Here’s what the data points toward:

• Longer job searches are the new normal. With fewer openings and more competition, the timeline from application to offer is stretching. Recent data from Huntr’s annual job search trends report shows that the median time to first offer climbed from 57 days in Q1 2025 to 83 days by Q4. Plan your finances and your patience accordingly.

• Salary leverage has shifted. When employers have more candidates than positions, they don’t need to compete as aggressively on compensation. Wage growth remains decent at 3.7% annually, but the premium for switching jobs has shrunk considerably from its Great Resignation highs.

• Quality over volume matters more than ever. In a market with fewer openings and more applicants, spray-and-pray application strategies don’t work. The data consistently shows that targeted, tailored applications outperform mass submissions by significant margins.

• The “safe” industries are narrowing. Healthcare remains the standout, but even that sector saw openings decline by 10.8% in the final months of 2025. Construction had a strong January, but beyond those two sectors, the landscape is thin.

The Bottom Line

The labor market has entered territory it hasn’t seen in years. With 1 million more unemployed people than open positions, the balance of power has shifted firmly toward employers, and the data suggests this won’t reverse overnight.

That doesn’t mean opportunities don’t exist. January 2026 showed genuine strength, and some sectors continue to grow. But the era of applying casually and fielding multiple offers is, for most workers, firmly in the rearview mirror.

The job seekers who succeed in this environment will be the ones who treat every application like it matters, every interview like it counts, and every piece of their professional story like it needs to earn its place. The numbers make that clear.

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