Paul Krugman and the Boom

This morning's Paul Krugman column in The New York Times nails it perfectly in his discussion of "Our So-Called Boom". The economic recovery, he writes, is a rather exclusive party to which relatively few of us have been invited based upon data that has been telling us for some months that while luxury items are selling quite well (thank you, Bush tax cut!), more mortal sales are distinctly less robust.

"An aside: how weak is the labor market? The measured unemployment rate of 5.9 percent isn't that high by historical standards, but there's something funny about that number. An unusually large number of people have given up looking for work, so they are no longer counted as unemployed, and many of those who say they have jobs seem to be only marginally employed. Such measures as the length of time it takes laid-off workers to get new jobs continue to indicate the worst job market in 20 years."

Krugman's OpEd pieces are always sobering and almost always very well thought out.