1 The unemployment rate is now close to estimates of its longer-run normal level, and other measures of labor utilization have improved appreciably.
As shown in figure 1, a broader measure of labor underutilization--the U-6 measure, which includes not only the unemployed but also people working part time who would like full-time employment and those who would like a job but are not actively looking--has retraced nearly all of the steep run-up that occurred as a result of the recession.