As Matt Yglesias reported just a few minutes ago, the US in May hit the number of jobs it had prior to the recession. That's great news, but it only means we've climbed out of a massive hole. Had job growth continued unabated instead of being tanked by the recession, there would be millions more jobs, the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute reports today:
We're back to the number of jobs we had before the recession, but we should have 7 million more. #nfp #jobsday pic.twitter.com/5cIUh2hmDY
— Economic Policy Inst (@EconomicPolicy) June 6, 2014
So what it means to hit that prerecession peak is to start back at zero, after six years. That's a very long time to have waited, and it means we would have otherwise been way better off now than prior to the recession...possibly, better off to the tune of 7 million jobs, in fact.
