More on the Continuing Weakness of the Labor Market

The November jobs numbers were unambiguously good news. The economy is moving in the right direction and at a faster pace than we had seen in years. But we have to realize how far the labor market has to go before it makes up the ground lost in the recession.

The simplest and best measure is the employment to population ratio (EPOP), which gives the percentage of the adult population which is employed. This stood at 59.2 percent in November (unchanged from October). This is 1.0 percentage poi...