By Michael Madowitz & Danielle Corley

– The labor market is much healthier today than at any point since the Great Recession, but beneath the top-line numbers, it still has a long way to go before it returns to historically healthy conditions. Policymakers and pundits have taken far too much comfort in the decline in the headline unemployment rate. The extent to which unemployment has dropped depends on how it’s measured, especially in this recovery. When policymakers talk about the need to let off the gas pedal and start tightening policy, which Congress has been proudly doing since 2010, they are consciously or unconsciously taking a myopic view of the labor market’s recovery and causing permanent damage to the economy.

If we do not aggressively reintroduce the workers who have left the labor force and reduce the number of long-term unemployed, not only would it be an injustice to them, but it would also be a huge, permanent shrinking of the American economy as a whole.

Source: http://app.mx3.americanprogressaction.org/e/es.aspx?s=785&e=785474&elq=de7e9a05844b4d45b5c1f880c58db023&elqaid=24880&elqat=1&elqTrackId=8581aac56ecd4290885bec2ab22701cf