The Beveridge Curve is one of the most important charts in labor economics and almost nobody outside academia looks at it.
It maps the relationship between job openings and unemployment. When the curve shifts outward, the labor market becomes less efficient at matching workers to jobs; when it shifts inward, matching efficiency improves.
Using EconLens, I pulled current JOLTS data and unemployment from FRED and plotted the curve relative to pre‑COVID history. The curve shifted dramatically outward in 2021–2022 as openings spiked and unemployment fell.
The good news is that it has been moving back inward: job openings are falling without unemployment rising much, which is exactly what a soft landing looks like on the Beveridge Curve. The bad news is that we are still above the pre‑COVID curve—structural mismatch remains, and historically the last stretch of normalization is where things get fragile.
The Fed is implicitly betting that the curve keeps moving inward. If it pivots and starts moving northeast instead, that is when the soft‑landing narrative breaks.
EconLens makes this kind of analysis accessible in one query, which is why both practitioners and students have started using it.