BusinessWeek details:

Job openings in the U.S. fell in November to the lowest level in four months, a
sign employers are reluctant to expand staff even as payroll reductions waned from earlier last year.

Openings declined by 156,000 to 2.42 million, the second- lowest level since records began in 2000, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The number of unfilled positions was down 50 percent since peaking in June 2007.

“It confirms the suspicion that most of the improvement in non-farm payroll employment has been due to reduced firing and not renewed hiring,” said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York. “This is the last shoe to drop for the recovery in the labor market and we’re still waiting.”