For Immediate Release: Thursday, July 15th, 2010
Contact: Karen Conner or Eve Turow, news@epi.org 202-775-8810

As corporations begin reporting second quarter earnings this week, they will paint a picture of robust recovery that starkly contrasts with the stalled job market. Indeed, corporate profits had already made up all of the ground lost in the recession, and then some, by the first quarter of this year. The country’s labor market, however, still has far fewer jobs than it did at the start of the recession in December 2007. Today’s Snapshot shows trends in both corporate profits (both privately and publicly-owned) and employment since the start of the recession. It includes a chart that indexes both to 100 at the start of the recession so the lines indicate how far profits and employment have recovered. Although corporate profits suffered in the early part of the recession, they have been steadily growing for more than a year and are now 5.7% greater than they were at the start of the recession.