America's Two Economies: A Data Driven Look
forbes.com
forbes.com
But if you're currently unemployed, you seem to stay that way for quite some time.
What I can't decide is if in the US this is more driven by a major structural change in the economy (i.e. capitalism's creative destruction) or if companies across the board were using the recession as an excuse to lay off unneeded workers due to broader productivity increases (i.e. capitalism's efficiency-rewarding) or both.
Some sectors seem to be more creative destruction (think auto companies and financial firms) while it looks to me like the broader economy responded by locking in productivity gains (eliminating unproductive positions to save costs) to give themselves enough padding to weather the downturn. Maybe the broader productivity gains were enough that the growing parts of the economy won't need to re-hire as many workers to maintain their growth rates. That means that job creation is going to have to be a lot of "new" jobs - ones in new and/or growing industries - and not just refilling the old jobs.
That's just my armchair analysis, so I'm not sure how accurate it will end up being.
"The data confirm what we see and hear around us if we are willing to look and listen. There is this "other" economy with high unemployment and a very low and still-declining employment-to-population ratio. The term "jobless recovery" doesn't quite capture it. Perhaps we will call this the "job loss recovery" because we don't seem to have turned the corner in the labor market--and it appears much worse than earlier jobless recoveries...."