Obama's Recovery: Still 7.3 Million Jobs Below Average

From Investors.com: 

Now at 7%, the unemployment rate has fallen to the lowest level in five years...

but there's no cause for celebration...

The country is still 1.3 million jobs shy of its previous peak, set in January 2008. And that's to say nothing of the fact that the country has added 14 million to its working-age population since then.

Labor force participation remains at decades-long lows and the ranks of the long-term unemployed at historic highs.

This weak job market continues to depress wages.

In fact, median household income is 4.3% below where it was when the recovery started, and it moved sideways all year.

This picture won't get much better unless the economy can produce jobs — month after month — at a faster pace than it did in November, and at a much faster pace than since the Obama recovery began in June 2009.

In the 53 months since the recovery started, there have been only 16 where job growth exceeded 200,000. The average monthly growth over the past four years is just 158,000.

During the Reagan recovery, in contrast, monthly job growth averaged 244,000 (at a time when the U.S. had a much smaller population).

Indeed, had Obama's recovery been merely as good as the average recovery since World War II, there would be 7.3 million more people employed today...
----
Link: http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/120613-682143-november-jobs-report-good-but-not-nearly-good-enough.htm