(Bloomberg) -- There’s now at least one unemployed job seeker for every vacancy in five US states, a sign that the labor market is loosening in swaths of the country.

Connecticut joined California, Nevada, New Jersey and Washington in the list of states where the ratio of jobless people per opening is one or more. Meanwhile Arizona and New York are nearing parity with a rate of 0.9, according to February data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

A ratio of one or more is bad news for those who are looking for a job, but in line with the gradual cooling in the labor market that Federal Reserve officials are hoping to see, along with lower inflation, before they decide to cut interest rates.

The last time the number of unemployed workers and job openings were roughly equal in Connecticut was October 2021.

Nationally, the job market remains relatively tight, with fewer unemployed people than job offers. The ratio has been at 0.7 for 10 consecutive months.

A ratio below 1 means that, in theory, every unemployed worker could find at least one available job somewhere in the country. Another way to look at it is that there aren’t enough job seekers for every posting.

The data over the past year indicate that that labor markets loosened in 33 states and Washington, DC. They were more or less unchanged in 13 states and became marginally tighter in Maryland, Mississippi, Pennsylvania and Wyoming.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the US economy in March 2020, the number of unemployed people per opening stood at 0.8 nationwide.

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