Two Charts That Illustrate Why Unemployment Is So High Still

The answer to why the employment part of the recovery has been so slow is a very simple one. I'll use two charts to show why: private sector employment and public sector employment. The data is seasonally adjusted and comes from FRED, and the public sector figures have temporary census workers removed (because they're just that: temporary) thanks to data published by Veronique de Rugy of George Mason University.

First up, the private sector:

Click the image to make it bigger. The X-axis is months after the official end of the recession.

Compared to the last two recessions, the rate of job growth from the official end of the recession (June 2009) is actually doing OK. The public sector is by no means "fine", as it lost nearly 8.9 million jobs from its peak of employment (January '08) to its trough (February '10) and it's still about 4.5 million jobs below that peak. That deficit in jobs doesn't even account for the number of jobs needed to keep up with population growth either.

However, its growth is similar to that after the 1990-91 recession, and it's doing better than after the 2001 recession. It would be great if it was growing jobs at a higher rate, but its current rate is not out of the ordinary for a post-recession economy.

Now, the public sector:

There's your problem. Overall public employment has done just about nothing but fall since the end of this recession. The terrible recent jobs numbers can mostly be blamed on the decline of the number of government workers. It's less a federal problem than a state and local problem, but that's your explanation for why unemployment isn't lower.