While Tuesday’s economic report showed positive signs that the country’s sluggish recovery may be speeding up, a recent report released by the Kentucky Center for Economic Policy suggests the picture isn’t quite as rosy in the Commonwealth.
Center director Jason Bailey tells WMMT radio the annual State of Working Kentucky report reveals a job market still struggling to regain its footing.
"The reality is we're still feeling the effects of the recession in serious ways," he says. "We still have fewer jobs than we did in 2007. We have a lot more people who are unemployed. We have a record number of people who have been out of work for a long period of time."
That means, while the pace of U.S. economic growth may be picking up, Kentucky isn’t out of the woods just yet.
"We're having job growth for the state as a whole, but it's slow and we're still going to get back to where we before the recession hit for several more years," Bailey predicts.
Among the report’s policy recommendations: avoiding prematurely raising interest rates and choking off the recovery, increasing the minimum wage, and passing tax reform that would allow for more investments in support for Kentucky workers.
