In January 2009, the President’s economic advisors projected that his trillion-dollar stimulus plan would keep unemployment from rising above 8 percent, and the unemployment rate would be 6.2 percent today.  Instead, we’ve now had 34 consecutive months of unemployment above 8 percent, and the current unemployment rate is 8.6 percent.  Going ahead, if jobs continue to be created at the November pace of 120,000 jobs per month, it will take 99 months – until 2016 – to recover jobs lost due to the recession.  That means this would be the slowest jobs recovery since official job data was first collected in 1939 by the Department of Labor.

 

*If employment continues to increase at a pace of 120,000 per month – the same number created last month.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and Ways and Means staff calculations.