The world’s third largest economy faces long-term challenges, including pessimistic forecasts from the Japanese public, the hollowing out of Japan’s working-age population and the nation's exorbitant public debt.
The different direction of economic fortunes since the Great Recession has had a major impact on life satisfaction in countries around the world.
Public views of the job market have improved modestly, but overall economic optimism remains limited. Many say their incomes are falling behind the cost of living and 45% have experienced a serious financial hardship.
Although the official unemployment rate was down to 6.2% in July, many economists and other analysts have concluded that that measure doesn't fully capture what's happened to the U.S. economy since the Great Recession officially ended in the summer of 2009.
For the first time in decades, the non-marital birth rate in the U.S. has been declining. It's likely that the decline occurred as a result of the economic recession of 2007-2009.
States that were hit the hardest by the Great Recession experienced the biggest birthrate declines.
The earnings gap in the nation’s workforce has widened in recent years as the pay of high-wage workers has risen and the pay of low-wage workers has fallen, but Hispanics may be feeling the impact more acutely than others.
The current economic recovery, which hit the five-year mark this month, has underperformed other recent expansions that have lasted at least as long.
For the first time in nearly two decades, immigrants do not account for the majority of Hispanic workers in the United States. And most of the job gains made by Hispanics during the economic recovery have gone to U.S.-born workers.
The U.S. finally has more jobs than it did before the Great Recession, but that's not nearly enough to keep pace with the growing population.
