Broader measures of labor market slack—for example, those that include individuals who are out of the labor force but say they want a job as well as those working with a part-time job but who would like to work full time—have largely returned to pre-crisis levels.
While the labor market has shown steady improvement over the past decade, the post-crisis performance of gross domestic product (GDP) growth has been more disappointing, averaging just 2 percent per year over the past seven years. However, beginning with the second quarter of last year, growth has shown some momentum.