No Evidence of Double Dip Recession With New Job Numbers

Although the just-announced drop to 8.8 percent unemployment hardly reflects a thriving economy, it does seem to show that the economic recovery has at least some legs. It’s unlikely the economy will be anywhere near full employment when President Obama comes up for reelection next year but there’s little to indicate a chance of a significant “double dip” recession. Three quick thoughts:

First, the evidence of recovery is actually pretty strong. Only two sectors, information services and construction, saw employment declines and the construction employment declines is within the survey’s margin of error. The workforce participation rate, which had been slipping, also remained stable.

Second, whatever their consequences—and a lot of them will be negative—there’s also little evidence that the massive financial reform and health care laws are causing short-term problems for the industries they impact. Financial services employment, which had been falling (and is a bit difficult to measure in any economy because of a quirk in the way real estate agents report employment status) actually trended upward. Health care, which added employees even in at the depths of the 2008 recession, showed another quarter of strong employment gains.

Third, Republicans will fail both in Congress and in the 2012 elections if they don’t change their style. An angry, pessimistic reading of the country’s future simply doesn’t jibe with the reality of a moderately strong recovery. It will make Republicans look bad and cost them at the polls.

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