Leave it to a state in the middle of the continent, where extremes of any kind (except weather) are frowned upon, to reassure the world that the country’s current joblessness is right where it should be — at the median for postwar recessions. The Economist trumpets that news based on a Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis chart showing that, 12 months into the economy’s official slump, the American unemployment rate lies at the exact midpoint between the harshest
(1948) and mildest (1980) recessions of the last 50 years, when they were a year old.

Not even Garrison Keillor could say our joblessness is above average.

Here is the Minneapolis Fed’s chart on joblessness:

A second Fed chart shows that American output (gross domestic product, adjusted for inflation) is tracking with that of the mildest recession.