Don't look to Europe for employment policies

from the New York Times blog Economix, Casey Mulligan: Progressives point out that the Western European economy has a lot going for it: a productive work force, new technologies, universal health care and access to education. Perhaps they’re right that getting our government more involved in the economy and smoothing out capitalism’s “rough edges” would give Americans some of those things, too.

Those same progressives tell us that expanding unemployment insurance and other government programs is an easy way to raise employment in the United States. But they seem to have forgotten that European policies have likely caused Europe’s employment to be less than ours, not more.

NBER: Recession ended in June 2009

IT'S OFFICIAL: The Great Recession ended in June 2009 according to the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The longest recession the country has endured since the Great Depression ended in June 2009, a group that dates the beginning and end of recessions declared Monday.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a panel of academic economists based in Cambridge, Mass., said the recession lasted 18 months. It started in December 2007 and ended in June 2009. Previously the longest post World War II downturns were those in 1973-1975 and in 1981-1982. Both of those lasted 16 months.