Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Happy 8th Independence Day, economic expansion!


 - by New Deal democrat

In lieu of a more traditional Independance Day post, in view of the fact that the economic expansion turned 8 years old this week, I thought I would take a moment to highlight how far we have come.  Because as mediocre as some things are, we have come a long, long way since the dark days of June 30, 2009.

Unemployment has fallen from a high of 10.0 to 4.2%, and underemployment has fallen from 17.1% to 8.4%:



Over 16 million jobs have been added since the bottom in February 2010:



As of May, real median household income just made a  new high (h/t Doug Short):



Since this statistic is skewed by the increasing share of households headed by retirees, the odds are pretty good that working age real median household income is actually doing a little better.

In real terms, the amount of wages paid out to regular nonsupervisory workers has increased by about 22%:



Finallly, real GDP per capita has increased by 11%:



None of this is stellar. In particular, I wish that wage growth were more stout.

But when you compare where we were then with where we are now, there's no contest. So Happy 4th of July, economy!