Chart of the Day: The New Normal

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EPI has a handy year-end collection of “11 Telling Charts From 2011” that’s worth checking out. Everyone loves a good chart, after all. I’ve taken the liberty of adding some holiday festoonment to one of them, which shows the total number of people who are unemployed or underemployed or who have just given up completely. As you can see, things have been improving over the past couple of years, and if we continue at our current rate we should reach a decent level of unemployment by around 2020 or so. Assuming, of course, that there are no additional setbacks or economic turndowns along the way. Needless to say, we could do better than this if we wanted to, but guess what? It turns out that not everyone wants to do better. Merry Christmas from the GOP, everyone!