The Slow Road to Jobs - BusinessWeek

The Slow Road to Jobs - BusinessWeek: "Could it take as long as five years for the economy to replace all of the 8 million jobs lost since the Great Recession began? The most bearish economists think so.

Job creation is proving to be painfully slow, and Washington is starting to panic. With unemployment at a 26-year high of 10.2% and climbing, the Democrats are scrambling to rev up the economy before the midterm elections next November. The latest effort is a 'Jobs Summit' set for Dec. 3 at the White House. The idea, said President Barack Obama after a Nov. 23 cabinet meeting, is that the gathering of business leaders, nonprofits, academics, and labor will 'explore how we can jump-start the hiring that typically lags behind economic growth.'

That may well prove an impossible goal since the White House is battling an ominous economic trend that has been gathering in strength and severity for decades. The U.S. economy, once the greatest job-creation machine in the world, has taken longer and longer to replace the jobs lost in recent recessions—never mind creating the additional jobs needed to absorb new workers into the market. Back in the '70s and '80s, it took as little as a year after a recession ended to add back the jobs that had disappeared. Yet after the eight-month downturn that ended in March 1991, it took 23 months. And following the 2001 dot-com bust, 39 months passed before the U.S. returned to square one on the jobs front."