May Jobs Report: Some Context
With the Friday jobs report, you want to think about the nexus of jobs and policy in the longer term, which in this case asks, "what did the administration do to offset the massive contraction in labor demand, aka the Great Recession?" The answers to that are the Recovery Act, financial and auto rescues, unemployment insurance extensions, payroll tax cuts, and more. Those measures demonstrably pulled the recovery, tepid as it is, forward, saved and created millions of jobs, and hastened the turnaround in net jobs growth. You might also want to note that Republicans have generally tried to block all of the above, and since 2010, have successfully blocked efforts like the American Jobs Act to do more to help offset the residual drag from the downturn. In that regard, their fingerprints are the most prominent ones on the current slog.
Jared Bernstein | Posted 05.31.2012