01/10/2014|  Russell Price

Six years after the Great Recession began, total employment in the U.S. is still struggling to attain its prior highs - but we're making progress. Amazingly, from its peak in January 2008 to its trough in February 2010, total U.S. employment dropped by 8.7 million, or about 6.5 percent in the span of just 25 months. (This equates to average monthly job losses of 350,000!)

As we are all very well aware, the road back has been difficult. Fortunately, labor markets have shown signs of gaining some traction in recent months and overall, the economy has regained about 7.6 million jobs since its bottom. In 2013, the economy added approximately 2.2 million net new jobs versus the 2.2 million added in 2012, and the 2.1 million added in 2010.   

Simply re-attaining the jobs lost, however, does not complete the story. Working with statistics from the Census Bureau, we estimate that the U.S. working age population has grown by approximately 6.3 million since 2008. If a conservative 60 percent of these individuals look to join the workforce, this would equate to the need for an additional 3.8 million jobs needed above and beyond the 1.1 million necessary to simply get employment back to 2008 levels.  


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A Progress Report: Not There Yet
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