Today is jobs day. And today’s jobs report, like most jobs report,
will lead directly to the most uncomfortable question of the
recovery: Has there even been an economic recovery?
Spend much time looking at the drop in the percentage of Americans participating in the labor force and you’re likely to think not. Unemployment has fallen 2.5 percent from its post-recession peak, but the share of working-age adults with jobs has barely budged. This leads to scary graphs, like this one, or scary stats, like this one: If labor-force participation had held at its pre-recession peak, unemployment would be around 9.7 percent today.
The implication of these numbers is that the recovery is a mirage. The official unemployment rate only counts people actively looking for work. It’s dropped less because people have found work than because they’ve stopped looking. Ergo, there’s been no recovery — just a hardening of the post-recession labor market.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/02/wonkbook-the-most-uncomfortable-question-in-todays-jobs-report/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
Spend much time looking at the drop in the percentage of Americans participating in the labor force and you’re likely to think not. Unemployment has fallen 2.5 percent from its post-recession peak, but the share of working-age adults with jobs has barely budged. This leads to scary graphs, like this one, or scary stats, like this one: If labor-force participation had held at its pre-recession peak, unemployment would be around 9.7 percent today.
The implication of these numbers is that the recovery is a mirage. The official unemployment rate only counts people actively looking for work. It’s dropped less because people have found work than because they’ve stopped looking. Ergo, there’s been no recovery — just a hardening of the post-recession labor market.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/08/02/wonkbook-the-most-uncomfortable-question-in-todays-jobs-report/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
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