As a followup to my blog on the February jobs report and the job openings for December, here is the job openings report – JOLTS – for January from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:

The number of job openings in January was 3.5 million, unchanged from
December. Although the number of job openings remained
below the 4.3 million openings when the recession began in December
2007, the number of job openings has increased 45 percent since the
end of the recession in June 2009.

These are seasonally adjusted figures. As the graph shows there is steady but stuttering progress.