One of the reasons that I very much like Jake’s graphs at EconomPicData.com is that they often go beyond  superficial analysis of the latest data release and find the story that really matters. A case in point is this graph that skips over the blah, blah, blah that usually accompanies the monthly employment data in favor of depicting the awful state of the jobs market in the US (click for a larger image):

Here are his comments on what this means:

Another way to view the magnitude of the downturn and lack of recovery is below. While the number of individuals employed is roughly 3% higher than seen 10 years ago, the number after normalization for population growth is down a whopping 8% and has not seen any improvement since the downturn (i.e. since the downturn in employment bottomed, the rate of employment growth has matched population growth).

Quite a hole isn’t it.