Unemployment Declines, but the News is Not Good
My reaction to today's employment report:
I've been calling on Congress to get get ready for the slow recovery of employment and do something about it since June 2008. (This was on Marketplace after the Bush tax rebates. The $787 billion Obama stimulus package came a year later, and I would have said the same thing in response):
Have policymakers reacted properly? The Fed has responded aggressively and creatively and that should help. But fiscal policy - the tax rebates the government sent out- was inadequate. Fiscal policymakers should have recognized that employment has tended to recover sluggishly in recent recessions and implemented policies that are known to create jobs. But they didn’t, and it’s too bad that one policy error, the failure of regulators to prevent the problems in the first place will be compounded be another, the failure of fiscal policy to come to the aid of unemployed workers.
As I note, it's not too late for Congress to help. But don't get your hopes up.
Posted by Mark Thoma on Friday, July 2, 2010 at 09:45 AM in Economics, Unemployment |
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