It’s a Sunday close to press time and I’m watching one of my favorite television shows, CBS Sunday Morning. One of the segments catches my attention; it’s about the job market seemingly coming to a stall, with first-time unemployment claims having exceeded 400,000 for 11 consecutive weeks (as of late June). A CBS Sunday Morning journalist interviews economist Lakshman Achuthan of the Economic Cycle Research Institute about why this is happening.
Achuthan explains that we’re actually witnessing an “impressive creation of jobs” compared with the prior two recessions/recoveries. “The problem is we had such a big hole that you don’t notice the recovery,” he states in the CBS interview. The issue with the jobs market, then, is not the recession but the “structural shift” that has taken place in our jobs market, he says.