Justin Wolfers in NYT Upshot, “The jobs report is not quite as terrible as it looks” | Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy
 
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Justin Wolfers in NYT Upshot, “The jobs report is not quite as terrible as it looks”

June 3, 2016

“The jobs report is not quite as terrible as it looks,” a New York Times Upshot piece by Justin Wolfers, reviews the latest employment report, which suggests that the economic recovery is slowing with only 38,000 jobs added in May.

“It is worth bearing in mind that this is noisy data,” writes Wolfers, “and the economy rarely zigs or zags as often or as dramatically as any initial set of numbers suggest.”

“There was a time when the working-age population was growing so rapidly that if the underlying rate of monthly jobs growth slipped to 100,000, that would not only be disappointing, but it would also point to rising unemployment,” writes Wolfers. “But that’s not today’s reality.”

Instead, Wolfers writes, “It’s not that things are getting worse, it’s that they’re getting better more slowly.” 

Read the full piece here: “The jobs report is not quite as terrible as it looks”

Justin Wolfers is a professor of public policy at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy and a professor of economics in the Department of Economics. Wolfers' research interests include labor economics, macroeconomics, the political economy, economics of the family, social policy, and behavioral economics.

Follow him on Twitter (@JustinWolfers) and The New York Times Upshot