Earlier this week, Secretary of the Treasury John Snow conceded the slowly-progressing economic recovery has not benefited all Americans equally. Snow said, "The idea...is to explore the things that produce broad-based prosperity and one of the things we know is that less educated people have seen their incomes and wages grow more slowly." Snow's comments come amid slightly more positive economic indicators and increasing business optimism about the economy, but also in conjunction with the release of two reports showing the recovery has been anything but good for most Americans. This week the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released a report comparing this economic recovery with previous recovery periods and finds that not only is this one less robust but that it is much more unevenly distributed, with corporate profits reaping nearly all the benefits at the exclusion of the labor market. In addition, the Congressional Budget Office released a background paper examining employment during and after the economic recession of 2001. Among its interesting findings, the CBO writes, "both the magnitude and persistence of the decline in the labor force [participation rate] during the past several years are unprecedented."