Now, in the wake of the Great Recession, a new metric for measuring America's economic health: the employment rate, thought by some observers to be a more accurate indicator of recovery than the traditional, near-obsessive official unemployment statistics. So reports The New York Times.
Why? By all accounts, the recovery (such as it is) from the economic downturn that officially ended in 2009 has been atypical and much slower to take hold than previous recoveries. On top of that, we have an aging work force and Baby Boomers retiring in droves. And the official Department of Labor figures, both nationwide and in individual states, don't account for the long-term unemployed who have stopped looking for work – in many cases, for good. Enter the Employment Rate as the "new unemployment rate."