Scary chart of the day: unemployment

Actually the falling employment/population ratio:

David Leonhardt explains the graph:

By late 2010 and early this year, the situation was improving again — only to slide back again in recent months, this time because of gas prices, Europe (again) and general post-crisis uncertainty (again). The share of adults with jobs, 58.2 percent, is now tied with its low point since this recession began. It has not been lower since 1983. ...
Government officials, especially those at the Fed, have proven too optimistic again and again throughout the crisis. In recent months, they have been saying that they didn’t need to take further action because the economy would soon heal on its own. What do they do now?

What the heck can be done, right?

President Clinton's Chair of the CEA, Laura Tyson, writes:

pair temporary fiscal measures targeted at job creation during the next few years with a multiyear, multitrillion-dollar deficit reduction plan that would begin to take effect once the economy is closer to full employment. Pass both now as a package.
Current signals from Washington indicate that this way out will be not taken: instead, partisanship and politics will trump logic and premature fiscal contraction will undermine the already anaemic recovery. Even worse, a political stalemate over the debt limit could precipitate a financial crisis and necessitate immediate large cuts in government spending that would tip the economy back into recession, driving the unemployment rate into double digits.

Paul Krugman echoes the same point:

The situation cries out for aggressively expansionary monetary and fiscal policy. Instead, however, all the political push is in the opposite direction.

A reminder on the magnitude of the problem:

The unemployment rate — measured by a different government survey, and based on how many people are without jobs but are actively looking for work — ticked up to 9.2 percent in June, compared to 9.1 percent in May (also not a statistically significant change).
There are now 14.1 million workers who are looking for work and cannot find it; the figure nearly doubles if you include workers who are part-time but want to be employed full-time, and workers who want to work but have stopped looking.

From the other end of the political spectrum, here is Reason's explanation: