On May 1^st, I wrote a blog post pointing out that at a rate of 175,000 jobs per month we won’t get back to the December 2007 unemployment rate until 2020.  Apparently, I was looking into a depressing but very accurate crystal ball, since 175,000 jobs is exactly how many jobs we ended up getting in May.

It’s still true that at 175,000 jobs per month, we won’t close the jobs gap before the end of this decade.  To close the jobs gap by 2016, the year of the next presidential election, we have to add more than 300,000 jobs every month.