The latest “Economic Beat” column from Barron’s Gene Epstein explores the current state of private-sector job growth.
Commenting on the June employment report released Friday, President Obama pointed out that private-sector employment has grown by 4.4 million jobs over the past 28 months.
He was right, of course. But he might have added that another 4.5 million jobs have to be tacked on in order to match the last peak in private-sector employment of January ’08.
Against that uninspiring goal, then, the glass is still more than half-empty. Also, progress has noticeably slowed. At the rate of job increase through spring 2012 (April-June), it will take more than four years, until July 2016, for that January ’08 peak to be regained.
At that pace, it will have taken 8½ years to regain the peak. By comparison, in all previous recessions since World War II, it’s never taken longer than four years and five months for private-sector employment to match its previous peak.
