We have Charts!
By Ian
Back to the quick-hit posts while I try to finish up this school thing over the next couple of weeks.
I received the following chart from Chart of the Day (though, if you subscribe to the free version, it's more like Chart of the Week), and thought it was interesting:
From CoD:
Although it took 29 months, there are finally more jobs now than when the recession ended. While it took much longer than the 1954-1990 average during which job growth tended to be immediate, jobs are currently heading in the right direction and at a pace similar to that of previous job growth two plus years following a recession.
I suppose partisans will get into the typical good news/bad news debate ("look how the economy is rebounding!"/"it took too long because of bad policy!"), but it just leaves me wondering if technological improvements in productivity over the 90s impacted job growth by changing labor demand. That is, what does it mean for job growth if it takes substantially fewer people to make the same (or more) stuff now? Should we pay more attention to sector-based changes to get a "truer" feel for the employment situation? And in the medium to long run, what are the implications of productivity outpacing retirement from the workforce?
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