July 05, 2010
The NYT’s Ross Douthat gave pessimism a new meaning when he noted the economy’s poor jobs performance in June and commented that:
“It’s now been 30 months since the beginning of the recession, and it looks as if it could take another 30 or so to regain the level of employment we enjoyed in the autumn of 2007.” Actually, we are down about 7.7 million jobs right now from the pre-recession peak. Making this up in 30 months would require creating jobs at a rate of more than 250,000 a month. This is a faster pace than we have seen in any month of the recovery thus far (excluding Census jobs). There are few forecasters who are this optimistic about the economy’s performance over the next two and a half years.
It is also worth noting that his claim that the economy was harmed by pessimism surrounding the stagflation of the late 70s is somewhat dubious. Investment, the component of output most sensitive to attitudes, was at a record share of GDP at that time. The investment share of GDP in the late 70s still has not been exceeded.
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