Rana Foroohar

摘要

Midway through the year, how is America's economic recovery really doing? It's complicated. We've just gotten what in many ways appears to be a stellar jobs report. The U.S. economy created a whopping 288,000 jobs in April, and the unemployment rate fell to 6.3%, its lowest level since 2008. Unfortunately, it didn't fall just because tens of thousands of new jobs were created in construction and retail, for example. A bigger reason it fell is that fewer people are looking for work. In fact, the workforce-participation rate-the percentage of people who are actually in the labor market-dropped to its lowest level since 1978.