US economy still in deep hole; Tech workers are young, really young; Andy Murray ends a 77-year wait

1 US economy still in deep hole (Dean Baker in The Guardian) The 195,000 new jobs reported for June was somewhat better than most economists had expected. While this may lead some to be dancing in the streets, those who actually care about the economy may want to hold off. First, it is important to remember the size of the hole the economy is in. We are down roughly 8.5 million jobs from our trend growth path. We also need close to 100,000 jobs a month to keep pace with the underlying growth rate of the labor market. This means that even with the relatively good growth of the last few months, we were only closing the gap at the rate of 96,000 a month. At this pace, it will take up more than seven years to fill the jobs gap.

It is easy to miss the size of the jobs gap since the current 7.6% unemployment rate doesn't seem that high. However, the main reason that the unemployment rate has fallen from its peak of 10% in the fall of 2009 is that millions of people have dropped out of the labor force and stopped looking for jobs. These people are no longer counted as being unemployed.

Of course, the weakness of the job market is not a surprise. The economy has been growing at less than a 2% annual rate for the last three years. In this context, it is surprising that we are seeing job growth of even 100,000 a month. Most analysts put the economy's trend rate of growth in the range of 2.2-2.5%. This means that the economy has to grow at this pace just to keep the unemployment rate from rising.

High levels of unemployment will put downward pressure on the wages of most of the workforce. This means that businesses and higher-end workers will continue to see the bulk of the gains of economic growth. This would be a bad situation in any case, but it is made worse by the fact that it is 100% preventable. We know how to make the economy grow more rapidly and generate jobs. But politicians are using old superstitions and deliberate lies to scare people aware from the sort of fiscal stimulus that would get the economy back on track. They will try to pass off the June numbers as good news. They deserve our contempt.

2 Tech workers are young, really young (Quentin Hardy in The New York Times) It’s well known that technology is a young man’s game. Still, it is surprising to see just how young (and how male). PayScale, a company based in Seattle, has determined that the median age of workers at many of the most successful companies in the technology industry, along with information on gender and years of experience.

Just six of the 32 companies it looked at had a median age greater than 35 years old. Eight of the companies, the study said, had median employee age of 30 or younger. Women were generally less than 30% of the work force, and in fields like semiconductors, represented much less than that. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the overall median age of American workers is 42.3 years old. The company with the oldest workers on the PayScale list, Hewlett – Packard, came in at 41 years. The other five companies with older workers, in descending order of median age, were IBM Global Services (38 years old), Oracle (38), Nokia (36), Dell (37) and Sony (36).

The seven companies with the youngest workers, ranked from youngest to highest in median age, were Epic Games (26); Facebook (28); Zynga (28); Google (29); and AOL, Blizzard Entertainment, InfoSys, and Monster.com (all 30). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only shoe stores and restaurants have workers with a median age less than 30.

“The firms that are growing or innovating around new areas tend to have younger workers,” said Katie Bardaro, the lead economist at PayScale. “Older companies that aren’t changing with the times get older workers.”

3 Andy Murray ends 77-year Brit wait for Wimbledon (Barney Ronay in The Guardian) Andy Murray is Wimbledon champion, ending that oft-mentioned 77-year hiatus since the last time a British man lifted tennis’ most alluring prize, and in the process scaling one of the more vertiginous sporting Everests. It is a genuinely gold-standard achievement for the man from Dunblane, given weight not just by the burden of history and the folkish annual summer romance of Wimbledon itself, but by the fact he is competing in one of the great periods of elite men's tennis.

Quite where Murray's Wimbledon win will rest alongside the great individual British sporting feats of the post-war years is a matter for interminable debate. But for now such comparison can be happily swept to one side in favour of simply savouring the glow of a wonderfully focused 6-4 7-5 6-4 defeat of the world No1 Novak Djokovic on a sweltering Centre Court.

In the moment of victory Murray dropped his racket and turned, mouth agape, towards the nearest section of the crowd – by happy coincidence also the press box – before crumpling to his knees on Centre Court, overcome at the end point of a gruellingly ascetic, occasionally obsessive journey towards an unassailable career high. Even in the moment of triumph Murray was still agreeably Murray, scaling the commentary box roof and hugging – not his mum or his girlfriend – but his coach, the laconically unsmiling Ivan Lendl.