The number of job openings hit 5.0 million in December, according to this morning’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary (JOLTS)—a slight increase from 4.8 million in November. Meanwhile, according to the Census’s Current Population Survey, there was a slight drop in people looking for work, to 8.7 million. Taken together, this means there were 1.7 times as many job seekers as job openings in December—the lowest this ratio has been since November 2007.

This slight decline in the jobs-seekers-to-job-openings ratio is a continuation of its steady decrease, since its high of 6.8-to-1 in July 2009, as you can see in the figure below. If the economy were stronger, the ratio would be even smaller—a 1-to-1 ratio would mean that there were roughly as many job openings as job seekers—but this indicates that we are moving in the right direction.

With the December data, we can also look at what’s happened throughout 2014, compared to the rest of the recovery. The job-seekers-to-jobs-openings ratio has been consistently falling, from a high of 5.9 percent in 2009 down to an average of 2.1 percent average in 2014. The average annual ratio fell 0.8 over the last year.

While the outlook for jobless workers is clearly improving, the job-seekers-to-jobs-openings ratio fails to account for the full extent of declines in labor force participation over the course of the recovery. 8.7 million unemployed workers understates how many job openings will be needed when a robust jobs recovery finally begins, due to the 6.1 million potential workers (in December) who are currently not in the labor market, but who would be if job opportunities were strong. Many of these “missing workers” will go back to looking for a job when the labor market picks up, so job openings will be needed for them, too.