The economic recovery in three charts.

Via Jared Bernstein's blog, we have an EPI analysis of BLS jobs data.

This is very striking, but not shocking at all: cutting public jobs meant that the economy as a whole suffered, by way of downward pressure on the recovery.  In other words, total GDP = private+public = total demand for goods and services.  If you cut public jobs, you cut total demand, which leads to cuts in private sector jobs.

So when is the austerity-as-economic-certainty-and-growth supposed to kick in?

The bounce back from the last recession is middling.

Private sector jobs responded at almost the same pace as 1990.

But what's holding back the total economy is public-sector jobs, which are steadily being cut.