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If you hear young adults complaining about how tough it is to find fulfilling, long term employment, you may be tempted to think they are just feeling sorry for themselves. After all, times are tough on everyone, right? Well, yes and no. Times may be tough across all age groups, and yet most Americans, and most economists, agree that young workers have it particularly bad these days. According to a new report from the Pew Research Center , "There seems to be a near consensus among the public that today’s young adults face greater challenges than their parents did in reaching some of the most basic economic benchmarks." The report shares some details on how young adults have reacted to the economic downturn: Many young adults have felt the impact of the recession and sluggish recovery in tangible ways. Fully half (49%) of those ages 18 to 34 say that because of economic conditions over the past few years, they have taken a job they didn’t really want just to pay the bills. More than a third (35%) say they have gone back to school because of the bad economy. And one-in-four (24%) say they have taken an unpaid job to gain work experience. For some, tough economic times have had an impact on their personal life as well. Roughly a quarter of adults ages 18 to 34 (24%) say that, due to economic conditions, they have moved back in with their parents in recent years after living on their own. Among those ages 25 to 29, the share moving back home rises to 34%. Most adults under age 25 are enrolled in school at least part time (46% are full-time students). By age 25, the majority are out of school, but jobs and housing can be hard to come by, and many “boomerang” back home. And yet, they remain largely optimistic about their future. Take a look: Read the full report here .

In his CBS Moneywatch column, Mark Thoma writes that while things may be looking up a bit, it does not seem that real economic recovery is happening anytime soon. He points to these graphs to remind us where we stand: Thoma: The problem we face is that the sectors that generally lead us out of a recession are the sectors that were most damaged from the collapse of the housing bubble and the subsequent recession. Housing construction is unlikely to increase anytime soon, and households are still struggling to pay off their debt, debt that was made worse by the unemployment, stock crash, and housing price crash that came with the recession. (The automobile sector is also important in recoveries, but the signs there aren't any better.) Recessions have different causes, and some types of recessions are easier to recover from than others. An increase in oil prices or an interest-rate hike by the Federal Reserve can be reversed quickly, and the recovery time is generally relatively fast. But as Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff explain in their book This Time is Different, recessions that are caused by financial collapses are among the most difficult to recover from. When this type of a recession hits an economy, lost decades are not at all unusual. Unfortunately for us, both housing markets and household balance sheets were severely damaged by the recession, and repairing them will take time. Housing values remain depressed with no sign of a robust recovery in sight, and households continue with the debt deleveraging process. Neither sector seems poised to lift us out of the doldrums in the near future. Read Will the economy turn around in 2012? here .

More American families are participating in the federally supported food stamps program this year, Phil Izzo reports in the Wall Street Journal. Izzo notes that enrollment in the program has increased 7.8%, and the actual number of Americans receiving food stamps has risen to 15% of the population. At Real Time Economics , Izzo shares an interactive map to show how enrollment varies from state to state. Click here to use the map. Read Food Stamp Use on the Rise here .

Nearly 60 percent of Americans live in the state in which they were born. And they are staying put more than they have in decades. According to a new US Census Bureau report, migration in the US between 2010 and 2011 was the lowest for any year since the bureau started collecting statistics on migration back in 1948: Read the report here . (Hat tip, Catherine Rampall, NYT )

As much as the US economy is struggling, exports have been strong ever since the recession ended. According to Jay C. Shambaugh , of the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown, exports have risen 23% since the end of the recession. This is easily explained by the weakness of the dollar, right? The costs for US goods abroad have decreased along with the strength of the US economy. Not so fast, says Shambaugh. Writing at Econbrowser , he points out that the patterns of where exports have risen do not match the dollar's relative decline: The takeaway for Shambaugh seems to be that, while exports can not serve as the fix for the US economy's problems, their relative strength is a sign that the foundation might not be as cracked as some suggest: The ability of U.S. firms to increase production and sell to markets where demand is growing is just more evidence that the U.S. economy is not fundamentally flawed or broken. Firms can find workers and increase output where they have customers. Yet while exports to growing foreign markets have been soaring, at home, residential construction has collapsed, structures investment by firms has collapsed, and state and local government spending has declined. All of these are a serious brake on demand. Compounding all this is the fact that real Federal Government consumption expenditures and gross investment in the third quarter was 2% below that of a year ago. This acts as a further brake on growth in output and employment. Some businesses may complain about fear of regulation (though in surveys their number one complaint is lack of customers) and some commentators may worry about structural unemployment and a lack of appropriate skills amongst the U.S. work force. There is plenty of reason to always make sure that supply side policies are sensible and worker training and education is adequate. But these do not seem to be the problems of today. Based on exports, the evidence shows that where there is demand for their products, American firms are more than ready to produce and to sell. Read What can exports tell us about the economy? here .

Greg Mankiw poses an interesting question to his students, and the rest of us readers, on his blog. Essentially, we are being asked to evaluate the policy change to increase the minimum wage after 2007. And he shares the following data. Between 2007 and 2010... The percentage of all hourly-paid workers paid at or below the minimum wage rose from 2.3 to 6.0 percent. The percentage of part-time workers paid at or below the minimum wage rose from 5 to 14 percent. The percentage of teenage workers paid at or below the minimum wage rose from 7 to 25 percent. Read the assignment here . Antonio Fatás took a stab at the assignment. Fatás, a former student of Mankiw, is now a professor of economics at INSEAD . He points to a key characteristic of the period Mankiw isolates: Not only we have seen an increase in the minimum wage but also a deep recession. It is possible that some wages have fallen and old employees have been replaced by new ones who are now paid a lower wage - right at the level of the minimum wage. This would also cause an increase in the number of workers paid the minimum wage. But, of course, there is a potential second effect of a recession going in the opposite direction: it can be that during recessions those who lose their jobs are workers that are being paid lower wages and, as a result, you might see the percentage then decreasing as opposed to increasing. He plots out the variables in play: Fatás: As we can see this percentage has been decreasing since 1979. In that downward trend we also see three spikes: around 1991, around 1997 and 2008-10. The shape of this line, including the spikes correlate very well with the minimum wage (in green). It is measured in real terms (1996 dollars) and the scale is on the right hand side of my chart (the scale does not start at zero to see some meaningful variation). The real minimum wage has also been decreasing since 1979. A decrease that has been interrupted with increases in 1991, 1997 and 2007-09. These three increases coincide with the spikes in the blue line, the % of workers being paid the minimum wage. So the mechanical explanation is very visible in the chart, as you raise the minimum wage you see more workers being paid that rate. Read Minimum Wage and Unemployment for the full answer. Click here .

The OECD 's composite leading indicators (CLIs) are "designed to anticipate turning points in economic activity relative to trend." The CLIs for August, just released today, are now pointing toward a global slowdown: Anything below that 100 marker points to economic activity below the long term trend. The August numbers show most countries in the OECD already below the line. India, Brazil and China are all below the line as well, with India and Brazil well below. The US, Germany, and Russia are looking better, but are also trending toward slowdown. Japan, is an outlier. Its CLI "continues to indicate a potential turning-point in economic activity." See the specific CLIs for OECD countries here .

At Project Syndicate , Joseph Stiglitz takes issue with the prevailing framing of the global economic crisis. By labeling it a financial crisis, it meant that fixing the banks was the first line of defense. While Stiglitz isn't arguing that policymakers should not have taken action to fix the financial sector, he says it was clearly not sufficient to mend a full scale economic crisis. Now, he says, policymakers need to address the very serious labor market problem, along with growing inequality and "emerging markets’ massive buildup of foreign-exchange reserves." Stiglitz: Where are we today in addressing these underlying problems? To take the last one first, those countries that built up large reserves were able to weather the economic crisis better, so the incentive to accumulate reserves is even stronger. Similarly, while bankers have regained their bonuses, workers are seeing their wages eroded and their hours diminished, further widening the income gap. Moreover, the US has not shaken off its dependence on oil. With oil prices back above $100 a barrel this summer – and still high – money is once again being transferred to the oil-exporting countries. And the structural transformation of the advanced economies, implied by the need to move labor out of traditional manufacturing branches, is occurring very slowly. Government plays a central role in financing the services that people want, like education and health care. And government-financed education and training, in particular, will be critical in restoring competitiveness in Europe and the US. But both have chosen fiscal austerity, all but ensuring that their economies’ transitions will be slow. The prescription for what ails the global economy follows directly from the diagnosis: strong government expenditures, aimed at facilitating restructuring, promoting energy conservation, and reducing inequality, and a reform of the global financial system that creates an alternative to the buildup of reserves. Read To Cure the Economy here .