The scariest jobs graph “you’ve seen yet.” That’s what Ezra Klein calls it.
Notice that adding new jobs at a rate of 200,000 a month would take us 150 months — or 12.5 years — to get back to normalcy. So far, only April has seen more than 200,000 in non-census jobs growth — and even then, just barely.
The Washington Posts‘s Klein found the chart appended to an article about the economy at the Brookings Institute website highlighting (irony?) “America’s increasingly distressed communities.” Here is the chart,
Brookings explains the data,
In June, the economy lost 125,000 jobs, largely due to layoffs of temporary Census employees. In the private sector, employment increased by 83,000 jobs. Thus far this year, the economy has added 882,000 jobs, with 593,000 coming from the private sector. The unemployment rate fell to 9.5 percent, but more Americans exited the labor force and the share of the population employed edged down.
Looking ahead, there are several challenges to sustained job growth. The boost to economic activity from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is winding down and job losses related to temporary Census workers will continue in July. Further, the four-week moving average of initial claims for unemployment insurance have hit their highest level since March and have remained above 450,000 all year.
The prognosis,
How long will it take to erase this gap? If future job growth continues at a rate of roughly 208,000 jobs per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year for job creation in the 2000s, it would take 136 months (more than 11 years). In a more optimistic scenario, with 321,000 jobs created per month, the average monthly job creation for the best year in the 1990s, it would take over 57 months (almost 5 years)
Read the whole Brookings article here. Reading down you will discover another chart ranking Florida second among states for the size of it’s job gap, enumerated as 699,719 jobs; more than double the gap of tenth ranked Texas.
BFG
July 27, 2010
Who was president when the most jobs were created in the 2000′s? How comew they don’t count how many jobs were saved?