Everything is relative. When I was a boy, by grandfather would tell me stories of his youth in the second decade of the last century. He was born in 1910 and came over here at some point from Russia. That was always a mystery. The family was dirt poor, but he remembered it fondly. He told stories of the Depression too. Of course, he had stories from the war years. Again, all fond memories despite the fact he and his family survived great deprivations. Our younger years are always the best of times, even when those times are terrible. Heck, I have fond memories of the 1970′s, even though my family could barely keep the lights on. I was a kid and did not care. I had fun.

Anyway, this post by Ashok Rao is interesting and a bit scary. Fake unemployment is at ~7.5% right now. Real unemployment is something closer to 11%. Some claim the figure, when backing out the part timers, is probably over 15%. I’ve always hated such games, but the government keeps playing games with the numbers. This WSJ article is a good read on the subject of part-time workers. NRO has a post from Veronique de Rugy with a pretty graphic.  Anyway, the two things that jump out to me from Ashok’s post is that job gains have flattened out now. We see that in the weekly numbers and the monthly NFP. Employers are filling jobs with temporary workers when possible, but avoiding any permanent increases to their work force.

That means this is the best of times. if you are a boomer looking to retire, you don’t care. The good times are gone anyway. The 20-somethings, on the other hand, are getting screwed and are going to get even more screwed. This economy, with all of them living at home and hustling part time work, is as good as it gets for a while. Looking at the recent economic data, we are headed into a period of near zero growth and possible even recession. That means the unemployment numbers will spike up again in the next year.  Two years from now we could be looking back at today fondly as the good old days.