Pessimistic About the Economy

Writing about our economy in Fortune, Stephen Gandel concludes, "we are screwed." He has three reasons why the outlook is gloomy, see what you think:

Reason 1.
We’ve reached it. The peak. And now we appear to be on the down slope. (snip) We had a few years of steadily improving jobs growth. That appears to be over.
It’s been six years since the last recession. The average economic expansion in the U.S. since World War II has lasted 64 months. We are now on month 74 of the current frustratingly slow expansion. Odds are we won’t have another year to get better.

Reason 2.
At this point in the recovery, with the unemployment rate as low as it is, people should be landing jobs left and right. But they aren’t. In fact, many people are still exiting the workforce, giving up looking for work.
Older workers are sticking around longer. The percentage of prime age workers who have jobs has flatlined at 77% this year, still below the 80% it was before the recession.

Reason 3.
Productivity isn’t growing. In fact, it’s probably shrinking. It used to be a rule of thumb that a 1% gain in GDP would produce about 150,000 new jobs a month. (snip) The economy is now growing at nearly 3% a year, and job growth is not 450,000 a month, or even half of that.

Gandel is not exactly a little ray of sunshine. Note a problem with the Fortune website; his three charts don't show up whereas his text does.