The sad truth behind yesterday's unemployment numbers

[bhikkhu]

19. Some of that depends on how you look at "previous trends"

and I'm always amused by selective interpretations that make the present look as dour as possible, and the past as rosy. Especially when the past was bush.

So, if you look at the eight years of repug rule prior to Obama, you have a net of zero jobs added. The one "good" bit before the end there was the construction boom fueled by the housing bubble - which is about the only thing (besides war) that they had up their sleeve the whole time. So how do you take 8 years of zero net job growth (including the brief housing bubble) and make it a "trend" toward 16.8 million more jobs than we currently have?

No argument with the rest - though the long-inevitable retirement of the baby boomers needs to be factored in. They drove a decades-long increase in labor participation, and labor participation rates are in predictable decline in part due to their cycling out of the job market. Another factor there is the trend toward higher education, as compared with the 60's, as more kids go to college than previously.

One of the best approaches to current problems, I think, is a higher minimum wage.