, Columnist
Why the U.S. Has a Monopoly on Jobless Recoveries
Most rich countries hire back workers after a recession. The U.S. replaces them with machines.
There's no return.
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In a series of earlier columns, I suggested that the U.S. has systematically underestimated the intangible value of jobs, while focusing too exclusively on economic efficiency. The real question is how can the U.S. turn that idea into real effective policy, without severely damaging the economy in the process. When looking for policy ideas, one place to start is other rich countries. And when we look at other developed nations, what we find is that in recent decades, they seem to do a better job putting people back to work after recessions.
In the U.S., we’ve been seeing a phenomenon sometimes called the jobless recovery. Look at a graph of the prime-age employment-to-population ratio since 1948: