Today, the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the non-farm payroll report for the month of December. It is highly anticipated that the report will show either 4.7 percent or 4.6 percent unemployment rate. This rate is very close to the lowest rate seen before the Great recession of 2008/09. So, is it fair to conclude that US labor market is as strong as it used to be before the crisis?

While the unemployment rate is a key measure of that, another way of analyzing it would be to look at the employment to population ratio. Higher the ratio, the greater goods it would bear. The above chart from St. Louis Fed’s economic dashboard paints a very different picture. The employment to population ratio is much lower than it was before the crisis. Currently, it is at 59.7 percent the worst level since 1984. It is also 3.6 percent lower that it was before the crisis.

It certainly explains why people cheered when the President-elect Donald Trump said during his campaign that he is going to bring back jobs.