Matthew C Klein, Columnist

The Very Worst Part of Today's Lousy Jobs Report

Incomes, hours worked, and employment all disappointed in June.

August 2, 2013 at 3:14 PM UTC

Matthew C. Klein writes for Bloomberg View about the economy and financial markets. He previously wrote for the Economist magazine and its economics blog, Free Exchange. Before that, Klein was a research associate at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he spent more than two years studying the history of the Federal Reserve and the intellectual history of monetary economics for an upcoming book by Sebastian Mallaby. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he studied the economies of Central and Eastern Europe and advised institutional investors on asset-liability management. Klein has a bachelor's degree in history from Yale University. Originally from Chicago, he lives in New York.

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New reports from theU.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Bureau of Economic Analysis confirm that America's economy is still struggling to grow. If the trends of the past three years persist the U.S. will experience at least a lost decade.

Only 162,000 jobs were added in June, compared to an expected gain of 185,000. According to a persuasive analysis from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, at that pace it would take another five years to return to full employment. This estimate includes aggressive assumptions about aging, immigration and the birthrate that make the "employment gap" smaller than many others believe.