The recession ended way back in 2009. Sitting here in California is doesn’t feel like it is over.
Check out the graph at Carpe Diem for a visual explaining my confusion: The current state of the US Economy explained in one chart.
Compared to the peak at the start of the recession, GDP has now increased about 5.6% and employment is down about 1.4%. GDP is at record high with less jobs that the start of the recession.
Both GDP and employment turned downward at about the same time with employment falling farther than GDP. Looks like GDP dropped about 4% and employment dropped about 5.5%. Jobs have come back slower than the economy.
So that’s why I’m still scratching my head – the economy is cruising along just fine but jobs have not recovered to where they were at the start of the recession.
If jobs had tracked the same as GDP, there would be about 7M more people working.
Explanation is that companies are generating far more output with far less staff.