{"id":3453,"date":"2012-01-26T10:22:38","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T15:22:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.multiplier-effect.org\/?p=3453"},"modified":"2012-01-26T11:46:24","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T16:46:24","slug":"is-the-labor-market-still-stuck-at-its-new-normal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/is-the-labor-market-still-stuck-at-its-new-normal\/","title":{"rendered":"Is the labor market still stuck at its &#8220;new normal&#8221;?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/files\/2012\/01\/fredgraph.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-3459\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/files\/2012\/01\/fredgraph.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"630\" height=\"378\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/files\/2012\/01\/fredgraph.png 630w, https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/files\/2012\/01\/fredgraph-300x180.png 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 630px) 100vw, 630px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) noted on <a title=\"BLS website\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/\" target=\"_blank\">its website<\/a> yesterday that in 2011, \u201cannual totals for [layoff] events and initial claims were at their lowest levels since 2007.\u201d Nonetheless, <a title=\"New York Times on Fed announcement\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/01\/26\/business\/economy\/fed-to-maintain-rates-near-zero-through-late-2014.html\" target=\"_blank\">today\u2019s report<\/a> that the Fed open-market committee plans to keep short-term interest rates low until late 2014 reminds us of the obvious but unfortunate fact that the current slump in employment growth is continuing.<\/p>\n<p>Appearing at the top of this post is a chart showing monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) figures on new hiring, which remains very slow. Last week, in citing similar data, Ed Lazaer argued that \u201cIf jobs are scarce and wages are flat or falling, decent increases in the gross domestic product or the stock market are almost irrelevant\u201d (<em>WSJ<\/em> link <a title=\"Lazaer's op-ed piece\" href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052970204468004577165292033648810.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>). One should not forget that the last official recession began in December 2007\u2014well over four years ago. (National Bureau of Economic Research recession dates are indicated with grey shading in the figure above.)\u00a0 Such dates are somewhat arbitrary. To take another example, the <a title=\"table A-15 of BLS household survey release\" href=\"http:\/\/www.bls.gov\/news.release\/empsit.t15.htm\" target=\"_blank\">BLS\u2019s broadest labor underutilization rate<\/a> still stood at 15.2 percent as of last month, down only modestly from 16.6 percent the previous December.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) noted on its website yesterday that in 2011, \u201cannual totals for [layoff] events and initial claims were at their lowest levels since 2007.\u201d Nonetheless, today\u2019s report that the Fed open-market committee plans to keep short-term interest rates low until late 2014 reminds us of the obvious but unfortunate fact [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":193,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,40],"tags":[1128,7,154,187,23,108],"class_list":["post-3453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-employment","category-monetary-policy","tag-employment","tag-federal-reserve","tag-interest-rates","tag-labor-market","tag-recession","tag-unemployment-data"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/193"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3453"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3463,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3453\/revisions\/3463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bard.edu\/multiplier-effect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}