Recovery is Solidly Underway but There Remains a Big Hill to Climb

The national unemployment picture is improving with over 200,000 jobs added in March. [Note: this is the last link to the NY Times I provide before the pay wall goes up - I'll try and take that into account in the future]  Yes, the rate didn't budge much and is still high at 8.8%, but this is expected as more and more job seekers return to the job market.    This is also happening at a time when state and local governments are shedding jobs at a brisk pace (15,000 jobs lost) which tempers the recovery but also signal that private sector job gains are good.  Still at this pace it'll be a number of years before we recover fully.  Truly good news would be to break the 300,000 mark for a number of months.  

The NY Times' Economix blog has a nice graph (reproduced above) that shows just how bad the unemployment situation got in historical perspective and how far we still have to climb.