Recession Cost 7 Million Jobs

This is not the first time mankind has been hit by a recession. But the present recession is different. More than 7 million jobs were lost in this 2 year period. The markets are picking up now but economists believe that the employment scenario will take time to improve. It will take a few years for the damage to be rectified, and mind you, not all of it will. It is impossible to get so many jobs back whatever happens. 7 million is a big figure, and compare that to just around 1 million jobs lost in the previous recession in 2001.

The economic recession has made such a big hole in the economy, that it is just impossible to recover from it completely, at least in terms of the job market. At present, the unemployment rate is around 10%. Even though the negative effect of the recession seems to be lessening, that rate isn't going to come down much, even for the next couple of years. In fact, it will go up to somewhere around 11% in this current year. The job market will continue to remain weak. Another factor is that in this calculation of 10% unemployment, it does not include millions of individuals who have just stopped or given up looking for work. So the actual rate of unemployment is much higher.

Lakshman Achuthan, Managing Director of Economic Cycle Research Institute said, "The problem is recovery doesn't mean recovered. We need a long recovery to get back 7 million jobs. Even if there is decent growth this year, there will be slow growth over the course of the expansion. That means it could take as long as 10 years to recover all the lost jobs, and that assumes that there isn't another recession in that time frame." Gad Lavanon, Associate Director of Macroeconomic Research for the Conference Board said that unemployment will remain at or above 10% all the way through 2010. He did not expect unemployment to roll back to pre-recession levels of under 5% any time in the next six years either. He added, "Our forecast is for a very mild jobs recovery probably throughout 2010. Low consumer confidence and tight credit will keep consumer spending in check, which in turn will stop employers from adding staff in significant numbers. If you look at previous expansions, consumer confidence was at a much higher level than it is now at this point in the cycle."

This recession did more damage that anyone could ever imagine. Experts hope that some damage is repaired in the next 2 - 3 years at least, if not more.