Barry Ritholtz, Columnist

The U.S. Labor Market Isn’t all That Healthy

Underemployment is a problem that isn’t measured well by the official data.

July 1, 2019 at 11:30 AM UTC

Barry Ritholtz is a former Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He is chairman and chief investment officer of Ritholtz Wealth Management, and was previously chief market strategist at Maxim Group. He is the author of “Bailout Nation.”

The lines may be gone, but the pain lingers.
Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images

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By most measures, the U.S. is at or very close to full employment. The unemployment rate today is 3.6%, the lowest since 1969.

And yet, there is a sense that something is amiss.

Consider the following data points. In a typical full employment economy, this is what you would expect to see: