>Yet the total "aggregate weekly hours of production or nonsupervisory
>workers" is still below the 2002 level:
>http://stats.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t18.htm
>
>The St. Louis Federal Reserve graphically tracks this number pretty well.
>You can see it at the link below, which shows that the real trough in total
>labor demand was in 2003:
>http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/AWHI/11/10yrs
>
>Work seems to be being spread around a bit more, but the total labor needed
>still seems to have increased only modestly, and nowhere near older levels.
Well, yeah, but the trend has changed: the recovery is no longer jobless. Even the hours chart you cite has turned up. The February and March employment counts were revised upwards. The Dems have effectively lost the economy as a campaign issue, unless they want to take on more troublesome structural stuff like health insurance, labor law, and the minimum wage, which may be too radioactive.
Doug