The Federal Reserve these days seems to want to focus on employment as a reason to justify rate normalization, hinting just this week about an “active” June meeting coming up.Of course, there are many reasons put forth to dismiss the reported numbers as being phony as a three dollar bill, with Shadowstats reporting a real unemployment rate at around 23%.But let’s take the government reporting at its word for a moment and view this employment recovery in the context of past employment recoveries from recessions: (click on images to enlarge).

This chart shows that there seems to be some growing problem with each subsequent employment recovery that slows it down from what a normal downturn and recovery in the economy should look like.What has been growing in recent decades with regard to economic downturns?I’ll give you three hints – “F” “E” “D” – and its middle initial is Federal Reserve Board.

What’s the problem with these ever slowing recoveries?With our high-powered Fed, now more high-powered than ever, you would think we could snuff out a nagging problem like this.  But maybe that’s just the problem.Our Fed has been busy snuffing out problems for so long that it has created a problem that can’t be snuffed out – the mountain of debt left over from all the snuffing:

If you compare the above charts, you can see that the sharply growing employment lag back to normal in each recession recovery from 1980 onward in chronological order correlates well with the sharply growing debt level.As we attempt to normalize from our last recession, we appear to be going up against some kind of wall with real employment as measured by Shadowstats actuallyclimbing even as the Fed frantically mashes its machinery into a screaming over-heated condition.

We hear a lot about all the Fed’s largess going to repair the mortgage ravaged balance sheets of banks, making them hesitant to lend. But the mortgage ravaging was the left-over of the Fed’s previous snuffing project, loose money home ownership. I guess these repairs get to be a bigger job each time.