Friday, June 6, 2014

The Economy - Jobs

The employment report for May was released today and it paints a more positive picture for the U.S. economy. We have finally recovered all the jobs that were lost in the great recession and the unemployment rate remained unchanged at 6.3%. It took nearly 5 years to recover! Now the report was positive, but clearly things are not "healthy". The labor force participation rate is still very high (though some claim that's the result of demographics). There are also way too many people who are working part time, but would like to be working full time. The numbers also don't do a good job at telling us what kinds of jobs were created. How many of the jobs created were good paying jobs? How many were minimum wage jobs? I am glad that we have finally recovered for the greatest recession since WWII, but I am concerned that things are not healthy. We need more and more good paying jobs in the U.S. Unfortunately I think that what we have is a recovery in numbers of jobs, but not a recovery in the quality of jobs.

What do you think?

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