[Related to the Making the Connection on page 562] A columnist in the New York Times writes: So, according to Okuns Law, the unemployment rate

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[Related to the Making the Connection on page 562] A columnist in the New York Times writes: “So, according to Okun’s Law, the unemployment rate should have gone from 7.4 percent at the start of [2009] to 9 percent a year later. Instead it was 10 percent in December

[2009], and not much lower in January [2010].”

a. What is Okun’s law?

b. What explains the data the columnist is quoting?

Source: Louis Uchitelle, “A Broken Economic Law,”

New York Times, February 22, 2010.