In his March 2005 letter Richebächer writes that America faces its "worst recovery by far in jobs and income since World War II or the Great Depression... [I]t is the worst employment performance on record for the United States in the postwar period, and also the worst in the world. We owe the following details and the chart below to the Economic Policy Institute in Washington" [most recent EPI headline regarding last month's economic growth, however: Strong, broad-based job growth surpasses expectations] "Since the start of the recession, 46 months ago (March 2001), the U.S. economy has added a negligible 62,000 jobs. Private-sector employment, however, is still down 703,000, contracting by 0.6%."

Though I don't think that it makes sense to graph long employment series without taking demographic and socio-economic factors into account, I was quite suprised to see that a plot of the series for total private employment actually doesn't look very scary:

One should also keep in mind that total employment is estimated based on sampling procedures, and these have standard errors and are subject to bias during periods of structural change (see here for a discussion). The household survey, which is less quoted because it has a higher standard error, has diverged sharply upward from the establishment or payroll survery, and may reflect a surge in self-employment or lower job turnover (both of which would cause the establishment survey to undercount true job growth).

The Richebächer Letter is still worth reading, he believes that America’s real GDP numbers are grossly overstated, due to understated inflation rates. It's a nice summary of well-known arguments.