New labor data indicate that there is no sign of fast economic recovery any time soon

 

1. Good news - the number of unemployed seems to fall and ( with some deceleration ) may reach the pre-crisis level. The number of unemployed may drop when people get jobs or when they leave the labor force, however. 

2. Another good news - the number of employed increases (also with deceleration).  Here we have to retain in mind the permanently (linear) growing working-age population. It increases at a rate of ~2,280,000 per year (between 2010 and 2020). One has to subtract approximately 1,000,000 (population times employment rate)  from the current employment level in the below figure in order to compensate for the expected change in the number of employed. Therefore, the total  increase from 133,400,000 in April to 149,732,000 in November has to be 15.4M instead of 16.4M.

3. The labor force participation rate hovers around 61.5% since June. This is not good news. Considering the potential economic growth there is no prospective - the employed and unemployed population left the labor force and there is no sign of recovery to the pre-crisis level any time soon.