"Economists have discovered how bad the economy really is"

That’s not my headline — it’s in quotes because I lifted it directly from WaPo’s Wonkblog.

And isn’t it telling?

Anyway, here’s what Matt O’Brien had to say about those economists who have finally woken up to the reality the rest of the country has been living with during this “recovery” we keep hearing so much about:

Now if you add it all up, this shadow unemployment means our jobs hole is more than three times as big as it looks. That, at least, is what economists Danny Blanchflower and Andrew Levin found when they looked at how low the unemployment rate is versus how low we think it could go, how high the participation rate is versus how high we think it could go, and how many people can only find part-time jobs. That first part tells us how much further unemployment itself could fall, the second how many discouraged workers could come back, and the last how many people would work more if they could. In other words, it shows us the gap between how many full-time jobs we have and how many full-time jobs we need. The result, as you can see above, is that instead of being a million full-time jobs short, like the unemployment rate says we are, we’re about 3.5 million short.

So it’s no surprise that workers still aren’t getting raises. Even though it looks unemployment is low enough that they should have more bargaining power, shadow unemployment is high enough that they don’t.

Longtime Sharp VodkaPundit Readers™ have known all this for years, and so has anybody who’s been looking for work.

And so has anybody who finally gave up looking — and they number in the millions.

So are we supposed to sneer at economists Danny Blanchflower and Andrew Levin for taking so long to recognize the obvious? Are we supposed to cheer them for giving a solid number to the truth the Administration has been hiding for so long? And speaking of so long, what took?

Reading this thing, it’s OK to feel frustrated, relieved, and impatient, all in equal measure.