"We didn't have a mild recession and a jobless recovery. We covered
up a deep recession and will need a sizable bit of recovery just to get us back to the point the unemployment rate suggested
we already were."
CHICAGO -- The
government's announcement on Tuesday that the economy grew even faster than expected makes the current "jobless recovery"
even more puzzling. To give some perspective, unemployment normally falls significantly in such economic boom times. ...
The reality is that we didn't have a mild recession. Jobs-wise, we had a deep one.
...
The unemployment rate has been low only because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively
been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as "not in the labor force."
In other words,
the government has cooked the books. ...
Austan Goolsbee is professor of economics at the University of Chicago Graduate School
of Business.
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