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WASHINGTON -- The share of unemployed Americans who receive unemployment insurance benefits has dwindled to its lowest point in decades, thanks in part to benefit cuts in Republican-led states. Just 23.1 percent of unemployed workers received state unemployment benefits at the end of 2014, according to a new analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal Washington think tank.

More than four years since the Great Recession ended in June 2009, the unemployment rate is 7.3%, a big improvement from the high of 10% in the fall of 2009. Unfortunately, the rate is hugely misleading: Most of that improvement was for all the wrong reasons. This is an article that focuses on the unemployment rates in USA since the 2009 Recession. By reading this article many can be learnt about why the unemployment rates are such or how healthy the labor market of USA is.

According to the article, the Federal Reserve may be increasing interest rates in early 2015, increased rates anticipated to come much later in the year. Fed-Watchers and analysts may begin to see the accelerating wage and price inflation, as well as unemployment rates reaching NAIRU. This article also explains some key elements in our learning for this week such what NAIRU is, pressuring on wages, effects of low unemployment rates, etc...

In the last year, the most important question for U.S. economists and economic journalists has changed from Where are the jobs? to Where are the wages? It's a problem best summed up by Matthew O'Brien in the Washington Post. As the labor market approaches full employment, there should be more pressure on wages to rise.

"R.I.P., inflation. You had a good run, but it's over now that prices are rising less than 1 percent in the United States, United Kingdom, Europe, China, and Japan." Inflation is one of the main effects of economic growth in a country, indicating that the economy is in the "boom" phase. However, after a boom there will always come a recession, meaning that rates of inflation will decrease and give way to the problem of unemployment.