Economists worry economy won't recoup 7 million lost jobs - Yahoo! Finance

Economists worry economy won't recoup 7 million lost jobs - Yahoo! Finance

A two-year string of job losses appears to be near an end, if it hasn't ended already.

But most economists don't expect the employment picture to significantly improve anytime this year -- or over the next few years for that matter.

The unemployment rate, which stood at 10% in November, is expected to stay uncomfortably high for the foreseeable future. Some experts even suggest that the labor market won't be able to fully recover from the 7.2 million jobs lost since the start of 2008 before another recession and round of job losses.

This probably won't be a jobless recovery, like the 21-month period that followed the 2001 recession during which an additional 1.1 million jobs were lost. Most economists are looking for employers to start adding to U.S. payrolls early this year.

...

Unemployment heading up. The unemployment rate is forecast to be unchanged for December. But most economists expect it to rise during the course of 2010, even as employers start adding jobs.

Part of that is because the economy needs a gain of more than 100,000 jobs a month just to keep pace with population growth.

The other part of the problem is that there is a large pool of 6 million out-of-work adults who have become discouraged and stopped looking for work and are therefore not counted as unemployed. As employers start hiring again, many of those will flo ...od back into the labor force .That will drive up the unemployment rate.

Gad Lavanon, associate director of macroeconomic research for the Conference Board said he is looking for unemployment at or above 10% all the way through 2010. He doesn't expect unemployment to return to pre-recession levels of under 5% anytime in the next six years.