William Katz:  Urgent Agenda

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OUR DYNAMIC RECOVERY – AT 9:31 A.M. ET:   The Administration constantly tells us that we're in an economic recovery, practically roaring, tofu in every pot and two battery-powered cars in every garage.  Not so, not so.  From The Wall Street Journal: 

About half of the nation’s 3,069 county economies are still short of their prerecession economic output, reflecting the uneven economic recovery, according to a new report from the National Association of Counties.

The overall U.S. economy had reached its prerecession level of gross domestic product three years ago, Commerce Department figures show.

National statistics “mask the reality on the ground,” where some county economies were in recession long before December 2007 and others never experienced one at all, said Emilia Istrate, the association’s director of research and one of the authors of the report. “That’s where Americans feel the economy. They feel it locally.”

The report, released Monday, examined four economic indicators: GDP, total number of jobs, unemployment rates and home prices. It found wide variations.

Almost 400 counties saw no decline in GDP from their prerecession levels. Large counties were hit hard by the recession, but have recovered relatively strongly.

The roughly 800 counties boasting prerecession employment levels by 2013 are mostly in the Midwest and South. And just 54 had achieved their prerecession level of unemployment last year, the report said.

COMMENT:  Other than that, everything is okay.  Ignore, please, the fact that large numbers of any new jobs being created are part-time, and that the unemployment picture for recent college graduates is catastrophic.  Nothing to see, nothing to see.

January 15, 2014