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U3 Unicorns Puking Rainbow Recoveries
Do you ever feel a bit of a disconnect between the continuous media reports that the economy is doing awesome (here, here, and here to name a few) and how much it feels like the economy, to use a technical term, sucks outside of the stock market? Well, you’re not alone, and a couple of basic charts will validate your feelings. This is not data produced in the depths of my basement while I replace the tinfoil around my head. These are government-reported numbers on the health of the labor market. I call your attention to the time period during which the media was harping on the theme of, “It’s the economy, stupid!” and our recent “awesome recovery.”
This first chart shows the labor force participation rate, measuring the percentage of adults who are working. I’m using this instead of the commonly reported – and improving – U3 unemployment rate, because U3 has about as much correlation with the health of the labor market as the ratio of pixies to hobgoblins in Neverland. The reason I’m so down on U3 is that it behaves as if the underemployed are fully employed. (Settle down, James Pethokoukis, I mean the objectively underemployed, as in, part-time workers who want or need to work full time.)
If you’re just waking up, chances are you’re waking up to the news that you’ve lost money.
While we’ve been debating the Supreme Court, there’s been a whole lot of noise going on in Europe over the
The judicial decision to uphold all of the president’s health care subsidies may be very disappointing, but the economics of Obamacare are far worse than whatever constitutional mistakes have been committed by the Supreme Court.
The Wall Street Journal editorial page recently offered 
In the course of a six-hour drive last Thursday, I tuned in the NPR station on my satellite radio in our truck. I found myself laughing out loud periodically during 
I understand Mona Charen’s 
“There is not a reason in the world why we cannot grow at a rate of 4 percent a year.” That’s what Jeb Bush said when he officially announced his presidential run in Miami last week. And right off the bat, most economists trashed the idea.
As promised, the pope’s encyclical came out today, so I spent most of my morning reading and processing so I could say something useful about it. (Amusingly, I was recently pre-interviewed for an NPR panel on the topic, but they got spooked when they discovered that I’m a climate skeptic. Such disreputable views are obviously not suitable for NPR. So I had to wait and read the encyclical today, with the rest of the plebs.)
During her presidential announcement speech over the weekend, Hillary Clinton offered this interesting explanation for the Financial Crisis:
In 
Here’s some bad news for a Friday: you’re going to spend most of the weekend hearing about Nancy Pelosi. The House Minority Leader, her body temperature slowly elevated to allow full mobility and partial sentience, took to the floor of the lower chamber earlier today 
Last month, Goldman Sachs economists Jan Hatzius and Kris Dawsey put out 
It doesn’t take much sympathy to feel for the long-term unemployed, especially those who held down jobs for decades before discovering that — due to changes in the market, financial collapse, or injury — neither they nor their skills have useful employment. I’d even say that one needn’t be a raging leftist to at least consider whether the state should have some role in helping them transition into something new and remunerative, rather than let their skills and work habits atrophy to the point where they’re incapable of ever getting a new job.