Must-Read: Elise Gould: Prime-Age Employment-to-Population Ratio Remains Terribly Depressed

Must-Read: Elise Gould: Prime-Age Employment-to-Population Ratio Remains Terribly Depressed: “Heidi Shierholz, used to call the prime-age employment-to-population ratio…

…her desert island measure, if she could only take one with her…. The most obvious point is the huge nose dive prime-age EPOP took during the Great Recession. The green circle shows the slow climb as the recovery began to take hold…. Then, early this year, the EPOP stalled out (see the red circled region)…. This would be a terrible new normal for the economy, for the American people…. July’s rate of 77.1 percent is still below the last two troughs. And that’s an awfully low bar. We should be aiming higher, at least to 2007 and there’s a good argument to be made that we should be aiming for 2000 levels. Hand-in-hand with continue sluggish nominal wage growth, this provides clear evidence that the economy is far from recovered, and this is no time to raise interest rates.