Just as a reminder, returning to full employment will take a lot more jobs than this latest report gave us. What we’re on track for currently is something like a return to full employment in the 2020s:
To my way of thinking, that’s not acceptable. It’s a bit of an off-the-wall idea, but what I’d love to see is a surprise Federal Reserve announcement of QE3 next week. Conventional wisdom has it that the relatively strong report has weakened the case for additional easing. In fact as we see in this chart the case for additional easing remains strong on the merits. But precisely because conventional wisdom thinks this jobs report is likely to dissuade the Fed from doing anything, a new round of quantitative easing would be a hugely beneficial shock to expectations.
