Update: And here’s the actual post [sigh]:

The Wall Street Journal a short time ago printed an updated graph that’s been around for a while; here it is:

That same article pointed out that we currently have 4.2 million fewer employed than we had four years ago—that’s the strength of the failed recovery under President Barack Obama’s policies.  Somebody else also talked (here, here, and here) about where we’d be today were this administration’s policies focused more on employment and economic recovery and less on naked redistribution and outcome equalization.

A rule of thumb, as the WSJ also notes, says that unemployment generally falls by a half per centage point for every per centage point of growth above the long-run trend.  Note, though, the graph above.  We’re not even getting back to our trend, much less getting above it.   Which emphasizes the effect of our shrinking labor force as more and more Americans continue to give up hope of changing their situation and finding an actual job.

Now, the Federal Reserve Bank has cut its long-term growth forecasts: in early 2011, they put the long-term US growth rate at 2.5% to 2.8%.  Now they’re expecting a trivial 2.3% to 2.5%–which is not going to get us back to the long-run trend, much less above it so we can start bringing down our true unemployment rate and actually get Americans back into the labor force and back to work.