After a while, there just aren’t that many jobs to be laid off from. I don’t know how much the population has grown in 17 years, but I do know that the largest proportion of population not participating in the labor market is the highest it has been in 17 years. Combined with automation and the export of jobs to other countries, the declining labor force participation rate may exceed the rate of job creation, such that the number of jobs in absolute terms in the economy may be the lowest it has ever been. So then it would be now surprise that in absolute terms the number of layoffs in a year is lowest in 17 years, but the total number of jobs could also be the lowest in 17 years.
“the total number of jobs could also be the lowest in 17 years”
You can’t possibly be serious.
There are now approximately 140 million employed in the US.
As of 1997? About 124 million.
http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet
The number of jobs isn’t just not “the lowest in 17 years,” it’s actually at an all-time high.
Tax withholding is also at an all-time high, and that’s actual cash collected, as reported daily by the Treasury. Not subject to any statistical shenanigans by anyone.
https://www.fms.treas.gov/dts/index.html
What you and the rest of the knee-jerk economic illiterates on this thread fail to realize is that the economy is doing fairly well, despite the worst efforts of jug-ears.
Why? Republicans took the House in 2010. Never mind Boehner or McConnell or any lack of spine.
The useless golfer has been totally stymied by the House for 4 years — the end of extended unemployment benefits and the budget sequester brake on spending growth did the job.
Growth should be a lot better than it is, but we have survived and overcome the ongoing disaster that was and is President Chickenshit.
Try as he might, the bumbling idiot in the White House hasn’t been able to stop the American people from doing what they do best.
Now we have the Senate, too. His agenda isn’t just totally dead, the doofus now will be forced to actually veto what the public wants, bill after bill to the detriment of any and every Democrat running in 2016.
Only better years lie ahead.