Some are hailing the Bureau of Labor Statistics’s latest labor situation report of 244,000 jobs added during the month with unemployment rising to 9.0% as a sign that the economy has improved, the recovery “has legs”, etc. Frankly, I don’t see it. When you subtract the number of jobs added by McDonalds alone (62,000) and take into consideration the sheer size of the birth-death adjustment (some 175,000 jobs), I find that report pretty phlegmatic. It’s especially so what you take into account that a) we’re nearly two years into a recovery; b) according to the NBER the mean trough-to-peak period is 59 months in the post-war period; and c) the median is no more than 58 months. That means that we’re probably at least half-way into the recovery.
It’s all downhill from here, baby.
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