The headline numbers for the latest monthly employment report were an anemic addition of 69,000 jobs to the U.S. economy in May and an uptick in the unemployment rate to 8.2%, the first increase after months of declines.
During the last six months, employment has grown at an average of 172,000 jobs per month. Even at an average of 200,000 jobs per month, it would still take over two years to return to pre-2008 employment levels, though that wouldn’t be enough to keep up with population growth since then.
