Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The depressing reality of ‘the recovery’: Americans aren’t getting jobs. They’re retiring.

For most of his presidency, President Obama has been focused on the economic short run — which makes sense, given that he took office in the midst of the biggest recession since the 1930s. With his big economic speech today, he’s shifting to the long-run, talking about the structural changes he thinks the economy needs to see for the U.S. to prosper going forward.
But anyone who thinks that the short-run battle is over should take a look at a new report by Daniel Alpert over at the Century Foundation. Alpert notes that while the headline unemployment number is well below its recession-era peak, that’s almost 100 percent due to declines in the labor force participation rate — that is, the share of the population that’s either employed or actively looking for work. Don’t believe him?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/24/the-depressing-reality-of-the-recovery-americans-arent-getting-jobs-theyre-retiring/ 

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