The Political Economy Of The Jobless Recovery And The 2012 Elections

The current political economy debate is about the strength of the recovery from recession.  This graph provides the best comparison of job loss and recovery during our post war recessions.  It has been the deepest recession, but it has also had a long recovery.  The 2012 election will depend largely upon how the long recovery period will be understood by the public.  The Romney campaign argues that the recovery has not been as swift as it has been in most of our recessions.  It blames administration policies for the atypically jobless recovery.  The conservative economist, Ken Rogoff, argues that recoveries from recessions, triggered by financial crises, are typically longer in duration.  The administration has to decide how it wants to characterize the slow recovery.  If it blames GOP obstructionism, it will appear weak.  If it takes the Rogoff position, the public will have a hard time understanding it.  If it focuses on what it has done to keep the situation from being worse, it runs the risk of explaining why it has not been better. The loss of jobs in the Great Recession was much deeper than it was in the 2001 recession under Bush.  More jobs were created during the Obama administration, than were created during the Bush administration. We would be at full-employment if it had been a typical recession. Moreover, the stimulus kept the loss of state and local jobs from being worse than it would have been without the stimulus.