Monday, February 13, 2006
About that `jobless recovery'
Unemployment numbers then and now are compared here...
In the Chicago Tribune:
"For openers, the unemployment rate dropped from 4.9 percent to 4.7, with job growth in one industry sector after another. Back in the 1970s, '80s and '90s, many economists and public officials saw 6 percent as a natural, even acceptable, rate of unemployment; if the U.S. fell below that, inflation was sure to run roughshod."
"Economist Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute has noted that in the early 1990s, the jobless rate fell so low that Bill Clinton's administration moved to dial back the duration of unemployment benefits. The 'low' unemployment rate at the time was 6.8 percent--or more than 2 points higher than it is today."
