If it feels like we’re still in a recession, this chart, published on the blog of Harvard economics professor Greg Mankiw, explains why. Cutting through the terminological differences of “unemployed,” “underemployed,” “discouraged workers” and the rest, the graph expresses the number of employed people in the economy as a percentage of of the total workforce.
Bottom line: From an employment perspective, there has been no recovery. Employment growth has done no more than track population growth. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions as to why this may be.
