The old recession norm went like this: Economy dips, jobs get lost; economy gains, jobs get added.
In other words, a V shape.
The new normal looks like a U – and an increasingly elongated one at that.
A new graphic from the Council on Foreign Relations shows what many jobseekers are already painfully aware of: Since the 1990s, the U.S. job market has hobbled slowly back to health, struggling along even when the economy was on the mend.
The situation was even worse in the Great Recession. Although the biggest recession since the Depression has officially been over for around two years, millions of Americans remain jobless. The unemployment rate was 9.1 percent in May; the June jobless report is due out from the Bureau of Labor Statistics next Friday.
This CFR’s outlook is not heartening for jobseekers: If the current trends continue, job levels will not be back to where they were prior to the recession until 2016, according to their calculations.