The U.S. economy added 217,000 jobs in May, according to a report Friday from the Bureau of Labor. That number on its own might not seem particularly notable as it lined up pretty well with economists' estimates.
However, the latest report marked a milestone for the economy: there are now more jobs in the country than there were at the peak in early 2008, just before the recession took hold.
There were 138.463 million jobs in the country last month, narrowly topping the 138.365 million jobs in the economy at the peak in January, 2008.
We did it! In May 2014, the US finally recovered all the jobs lost during the Great Recession. pic.twitter.com/eSRtYVQb7U
— Matt Phillips (@MatthewPhillips) June 6, 2014
All in all, it took the U.S. economy nearly five years of recovery to return to that level. That marks the longest rebound from any recession since World War II, as you can see in this chart from Calculated Risk.
That said, the U.S. economy is still millions of jobs short of what it would have had if the recession had never happened and what it would need to accommodate population growth. There are also still more than 3 million people who have been unemployed for six months or longer.
We're back to the number of jobs we had before the recession, but we should have 7 million more. #nfp #jobsday pic.twitter.com/5cIUh2hmDY
— Economic Policy Inst (@EconomicPolicy) June 6, 2014