Left Behind -- Casualties of a Changing Job Market --- Looking Longer: Why for Many This Recovery Feels More Like a Recession --- As Economy Expands Slowly, Payrolls Keep Shrinking; Downside of Productivity --- Terri Brooks's New Prospect
[Fourth in a Series]</br></br>Economist Robert Hall has been puzzling over a thorny question for nearly a year: What do you call an economy that has started expanding again but keeps destroying jobs?</br></br>Mr. Hall heads a committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an academic group in Cambridge, Mass., that declares when U.S. recessions begin and end. In May of last year, Mr. Hall and his colleagues believed the latest recession might be over. Consumers were spending more and economic output was rising. All that the committee members needed to see was a few months of uninterrupted job growth to announce the end of the recession. "It seemed like the timing was imminent," he says.</br></br>But Mr. Hall is still waiting. Instead of expanding employment, companies are continuing to shed jobs at a furious pace -- 525,000 nonfarm payroll positions in the past three months alone. Since March 2001, when the recession began, the U.S. economy has lost 2.1 million jobs. The total number of people unemployed -- including discouraged workers who would prefer to work but have stopped looking -- is about 9.2 million. And the number of people who are working part time because they can't find full-time work is 4.8 million, up 46% since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.</br></br>In short, the U.S. is experiencing the most protracted job-market downturn since the Great Depression. It has left behind a remarkably broad swath of workers -- from young to old, and from high-school dropouts to the highly educated -- even as the economy has started growing again.