Today’s employment report, which shows that the economy added 223,000 jobs in April while unemployment ticked down slightly, is a respite from the unambiguously bad economic news of recent weeks. It provides some evidence that the fundamental pace of the recovery has likely not significantly slowed since the end of 2014—but this is no cause for celebration. That’s because the fundamental pace of recovery has been too slow to take up slack in the labor market, as evidenced by continued weak hourly wage growth (2.2 percent growth over the past 12 months). In short, it is likely that the pace of economic recovery since the end of 2014 has not collapsed, but it’s still too slow to deliver rapid and significant improvements to American workers’ living standards.
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