The Upshot section of the New York Times has an article in the 16 June 2014 edition that presents some very stark data about the tepid recovery of the US economy when viewed through the eyes of employment, as measured by Employment to Population ratios.  For the nation as a whole, the rate dropped by 4.5 from the start of the recession to the lowest rate seen, and the rebound has recovered only 0.7 of the total decline.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/17/upshot/measuring-recovery-count-the-employed-not-the-unemployed.html


The full Upshot chart, only a part of which I have reproduced here, gives the data for every state in the Union.  There are obviously some dramatic differences by state that reflect their unique economies.  But even some of the comparatively well-off states (The Dakotas, Nebraska) have, by this index, relatively tepid recoveries.

I also like this graphic.  They've done an excellent job of combining multiple data elements into a compelling (at least to me) picture of the recovery.

The Federal Reserve does a nice job of publishing a host of statistics about the financial system and the economy overall.  Today's release focused on industrial production, which sowed a nice upward tick in May after a decline in April.  However, the overall capacity utilization rate is still below the long-term (1972-2013) average, which is somewhat disappointing after this prolonged period of economic recovery.

For all of the details please see http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/Current/default.htm.

Job growth data for the US economy came out today from the Labor Department, with over 200,000 jobs added in May.  While nice and indicative of a continued recovery, the relatively high unemployment rate (6.3%) after 5 years of recovery is still rather poor.

I ran across this summary of the differences between some of the differences between the major statistics packages.  Thank you to the DataCamp Blog.