The War on Economic Recovery

"A job recovery tends to lag behind the economic recovery". At least, that's what our politicians are telling us. Quit complaining about how hard it is to get a job, you'll get it easily in a few months!

For the most part, the general principle is correct: recoveries in employment markets tend to lag a quarter or so behind recoveries in the economy (i.e. Production figures, Inventories, Stock market bubbles).

What do you then need to do, in order to assess the strength of the Bush recovery? We just compare economic figures (job numbers, profits, labour wages) from previous economic recoveries, let's say... 12 or 24 months after the worst part of the recession has past.

And so you say, "Aki, that sounds so ridiculously simple. Why hasn't anyone shown us these figures? And if these figures exist, why isn't the US Dept of Labour or Singapore's Economic Liars... sorry, Economic Statisticians... publishing them?"

Oh well, the raw numbers ARE available from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, but it will take an economist to put them together into a chart. Which the Economic Policy Institute has done, and you can see why no one dares to tell you the full truth:



The chart with full analysis is available at the Economic Policy Institute.