For workers, "it's going to be a difficult slog back," said Sophia Koropeckyj, a managing director at Moody's Economy.com. While the economy is expected to grow again later this year, analysts say, it won't be until 2011, at the earliest, before there's meaningful job growth.
All this spells trouble for the Obama administration, which is facing increased pressure to show results from its wide-ranging stimulus package and other intervention in the economy.
Since the recession officially began in December 2007, the U.S. economy has lost some six million payroll jobs. It would have been much worse without Obama's $787 billion stimulus plan, says Jared Bernstein, chief economist and economic policy adviser to Vice President Joe Biden.
By the end of next year, he said, the Obama administration's recovery efforts will have created or saved 3.5 million jobs - a figure that analysts say is a reasonable estimate, though it has been sharply criticized by Republicans.
But that leaves a huge jobs deficit. Bernstein declined to give a forecast of unemployment and the economic recovery, saying they will be addressed in a White House report to be released later this summer.
Until job growth revives, the administration is extending unemployment benefits for workers and investing $4 billion into worker training programs.
Obama also promotes a surge in "green" jobs as a result of his policy. But most analysts say it will take several years before a substantial number of such jobs begin to appear.
Expectations in manufacturing aren't high either. Factory payrolls never rebounded after the 2001 tech-bubble recession, in large part because jobs were permanently lost to foreign rivals or productivity gains.
This time may be no different, with hundreds of thousands of jobs having been cut in automotive and related industries.
Construction and finance payrolls also are likely to remain subdued, along with retail and trade.
All of which leads Kim Megonigal, chief executive of Kimco Staffing Services of Irvine, Calif., to ask: Which sector is going to lead the recovery?
"I don't see any job drivers other than government," said Megonigal, whose firm has 25 offices in California. "A year ago, we were filling 600 jobs a week," he said. "We're down."
Temporary-help firms are often the first to see evidence of a rebound in jobs after a recession. But Megonigal doesn't see anything stirring at the moment. He says he started his firm in 1986, but has never seen anything like this.
"Employers are telling us to wait, they don't know. It's a lack of confidence."
By the numbers
6 million Number of U.S. payroll jobs lost since December 2007, the recession's official start
9.4% Current U.S. unemployment rate
313,000 Number of Americans who lost jobs in May
- Tribune Newspapers
