Except the NYT headline said the opposite: "President of San Francisco Fed Sees Slow Recovery, Especially in Jobs." According to the article, Janet Yellen, the President of the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank, expects that the unemployment rate will fall to around 8.0 percent by the end of 2011. By contrast, both the Obama administration and the Congressional Budget Office project that the unemployment rate will average above 8.0 percent for 2012. In other words, Yellen is forecasting a somewhat brighter unemployment picture than is being used for budget analysis and other purposes. It is important that the public be made aware of how bleak the official projections for unemployment are. There can be no understanding of the importance of the case for additional job creation measures without a knowledge of the projected severity of the problem.
--Dean Baker
