Mini-unemployment Improvement Roundup

The economy saw a slight improvement today. Here are a few reacts from economic pundits:

Paul Krugman says the news isn’t actually that great. In fact it’s bad news:

The fact remains that realistic projections show unemployment staying disastrously high for many years. The chart above is from the minutes of the Fed’s Open Market Committee. Unemployment above 8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011; above 7 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Matt Yglesias is a bit more optimistic:

But this is still a pretty bleak situation. If you’re about to complete your last semester of college, for example, then you’re still looking at a labor market with no net hiring and a huge backlog of unemployed people you need to compete with for whatever gross job opening emerge.

Felix Salmon is just plain optimistic:

Today’s jobs report is genuinely encouraging, I think. Unemployment is down a little to 10%; employment is “essentially unchanged”, in the words of the release; payrolls in prior months were revised upwards; total hours worked went up; wages went up; what’s not to like?

–Daniel Strauss