Economic recoveries aren’t what they used to be. Since the end of the Great Recession in June 2009:
- US real GDP per capita grew by 3.6%,
- but per capita employment fell by 1.8% over and above the 5.5% that was lost during the recession.
This malaise in the US labour market has been the subject of countless economic policy debates and may be the decisive factor in the upcoming US election. The fact that employment is recovering much slower than GDP is a relatively new phenomenon; jobless recoveries have only really occurred after the recessions of 1991 and 2001. These last three recoveries represent a distinct break from previous postwar episodes of recession when both GDP and employment would vigorously rebound following recessions (Schreft and Singh 2003; Groshen and Potter 2003; Bernanke 2009).
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