Fewer jobs today than in May of 2000

The July 2 employment report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics marked 18 months of job loss and showed that the economy shed another 467,000 jobs in June, for a total of 6.5 million jobs lost since the start of the recession. The entire growth in jobs over the last nine years has now been wiped out – the economy currently has fewer jobs than it had in May 2000. The labor force, however, has grown by 12.5 million workers since then. “This is the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all jobs growth from the previous business cycle, a devastating benchmark for the workers of this country and a testament to both the enormity of the current crisis and to the extreme weakness of jobs growth from 2000-2007,” said EPI economist Heidi Shierholz.