Jared Bernstein Weak Quotations

This report shows a race between factors boosting net worth such as home ownership and factors pushing the other way such as weak wage growth. Unless we start to see better income growth from jobs and wages, it is hard to see major gains in net worth for the typical family.

People think unemployment is still relatively low, but there's all the difference in the world between a tight labor market and a weak one when you're talking about employees' ability to bargain for a fair share of growth.

Folks are coming back into the labor market, but they're not finding jobs there. The tepid pace of job growth was too low to keep unemployment from rising. We're looking at a fairly weak recovery, at least initially.

In a strong economy, hours and output can both grow, so long as output grows at a faster rate, thus resulting in productivity growth. But... productivity can also grow in a slowdown or recession, when a decline in hours outpaces weak or nonexistent output growth.