There was good news in today's NFP report: at 138,463K jobs reported by the establishment survey, the US economy has finally not only recovered the prior cyclical high of 138,365K, but surpassed it by 98K. Congratulations.
And now the bad news. As the next chart shows, that virtually every job gaines since the trough of the depression has been matched by at least one person dropping out of the labor force. In fact, since December 2007, the total number of jobs is virtually unchanged, while the number of people not in the labor force has increased by an unprecedented 12.8 million from 79.2 million to a record 92 million. Recovery?
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