Sure, the U.S. economy is recovering, but it’s doing so at a very…slow… rate. Some on the left, including the President, paint America’s bounce-back as a roaring surge of job creation, but in truth it’s more of a whimper, as the following four charts show.
1) The recovery is still lagging, even 49 months after the recession began. Heritage’s James Sherk writes in a new paper that “In the last quarter of 2011, net hiring amounted to only 4.0 percent of the available labor supply—more than 40 percent less than during the recovery in 1983.” Private-sector employment is 4.5 percent below pre-recession levels, and America is seeing the slowest recovery since World War II.
2) Unemployment down, but look at the labor force participation rate. Only 63.7 percent of adult Americans are active in the work force — meaning they have a job or are looking for one. That’s the lowest since 1983. To put it another way, millions of Americans have given up trying to work.
3) The economy is adding jobs, but slowly. The 243,000 net new jobs added in January is good news, but the pace of growth is nothing to write home about. The current economic recovery is far below any other recovery since the 1960s.
4.) Hiring is down more than 18 percent. Yes, jobs are being created, but hiring has fallen sharply and has only partially recovered. That’s why unemployment remains high.
Learn more about the economy’s slow recovery in Delayed Recovery Historically Slow by James Sherk.