began to be collected in 1948. even more dispiriting than this snapshot of the employment picture is that there is so little momentum toward improvements in labor market conditions. the level of payroll employment fell by nearly 9 million during and just after the recession. to date, only about one - fourth that number of jobs has been restored. the pace of job growth in recent quarters has been barely enough to absorb the increase in the labor force and wholly insufficient to produce meaningful declines in unemployment. the number of new claims for unemployment insurance suggests only modest gains in employment in coming months, while measures of job vacancies seem to have turned down. longer - term concerns for the u. s. labor market persistent employment weakness during an economic recovery, even such a tepid one, raises the important question of whether it is symptomatic of longer - run changes in the labor market. indeed, in some respects the recent weakness resembles the “ jobless ” recoveries that followed the 1990 and 2001 recessions. in both of those episodes, job growth remained weak well after the downturn in real gross domestic product ( gdp ) ended, and the unemployment rate continued to rise, though from lower levels than we have today. one might reasonably ask if these similarities suggest that structural changes have placed the labor market on a permanently lower growth path. a first response is that there are important differences between this recovery and the recoveries that followed those earlier recessions. in particular, some explanations offered for the weak labor market recovery following the past two recessions are clearly not relevant today. both the 1990 and 2001 recessions were relatively shallow downturns. this factor may have allowed more of the employment adjustment to occur through attrition, which can be spread over a longer period than layoffs. and both of those recessions followed long expansions, which may have permitted a buildup of productive inefficiencies that gave businesses scope to increase output in the subsequent recovery without expanding employment. 2 that said, there are some discouraging longer - term trends. even before the recession, the labor market seemed to be on a slower trajectory than in previous decades. between the business cycle peak in early 2001 and the peak in late 2007, the number of payroll jobs rose an average of only about 0. 6 percent per year, compared with job growth of 1. 8 percent per see michael w. l. elsby, bart hobijn, and aysegul sahin ( 2010 ),

##less ” recoveries is a slow rebound in aggregate economic activity. over the first eight quarters of all three recoveries, real gdp grew at an average annual rate of 3 percent or less, compared, for example, with more than 5 percent in the two years following the 1975 and 1982 recessions. even taking into account differences in trends across time, the slower pace of overall economic growth following recent recessions is striking. various arguments have been advanced in an effort to rebut the presumption that an aggregate demand shortfall accounts for much or most of the increased unemployment. the see christopher l. smith ( 2011 ), “ polarization, immigration, education : what ’ s behind the dramatic decline in youth employment? ” finance and economics discussion series 2011 - 41 ( washington : board of governors of the federal reserve system, october ). see, for example, christopher ruhm ( 1997 ), “ is high school employment consumption or investment? ” journal of labor economics, vol. 15 ( october ), pp. 735 – 76 ; and thomas a. mroz and timothy h. savage ( 2006 ), “ the long - term effects of youth unemployment, ” journal of human resources, vol. 41 ( spring ), pp. 259 – 93. for a dissenting view regarding the effect of high - school employment, see joseph v. hotz, lixin colin xu, marta tienda, and avner ahituv ( 2002 ), “ are there returns to the wages of young men from working while in school? ” review of economics and statistics, vol. 84 ( may ), pp. 221 – 36. bis central bankers ’ speeches most common argument is that the deep recession created serious difficulties in matching available workers to available jobs, resulting in a big increase in structural unemployment. the mismatches in question could develop for a number of reasons. first, some have suggested that the traditional willingness of american workers to move from weaker labor markets to stronger ones has been impeded by the sharp decline in residential property prices and especially by the large number of mortgages that are now greater than the values of the properties securing them. but research to date suggests that such “ house lock ” has probably not had more than a small effect on structural unemployment thus far. 7 as noted earlier, migration rates have been falling for some time. but the declines during the recession have not been larger for homeowners than for renters. nor has migration declined more in areas where