You may have read news that the U.S. economy “grew” from July through September. The increase in our gross domestic product, or GDP, came to about 2 percent. So isn’t it great news that our economy is growing?
Well, unfortunately, the pace of growth is so slow that it really isn’t going to help tens of millions of Americans who are unemployed or who have only part-time work.
That’s because the U.S. population and the size of our work force do not remain static month to month. The work force grows as students graduate from high school or college and enter the labor market. It also swells as immigrants come here.
Therefore, it is not enough that the economy is technically growing. That is good news only if it is growing fast enough to create sufficient jobs to “take up the slack” in the expanding work force.
But it isn’t.