12 July 2012

Job Market Inflection Point?

"Teen hiring  jumped 22% in June over the same month last year in what is shaping up to be the best summer since 2007 for 16- to 19-year-olds to get jobs"



"US jobless claims plunge to lowest in 4 years"


Click through the above to find lots of caveats and clarifications but still, that's not a bad pair of headlines for one day. 


What's notable is not so much that the American jobs recovery is slow. What's notable is that it continues in spite of a slow down in Asia, a slow-motion, euro-induced financial crisis, and continual public sector layoffs at the state and local levels. 


Total private sector employment has returned to its pre-Great Recession levels. By contrast, total public sector employment is roughly 3% lower than when Obama took office. At some point, this steady rise becomes self sustaining rather than teetering on the brink of  collapse; we won't know when that point was for years, but I'm still betting that we'll look back to 2012 as that point.

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