According to the Economic Policy Institute, since the recession began 29
months ago in March 2001, 3.3 million private sector jobs have disappeared.
This is the largest sustained loss of jobs since the Great Depression. Since
the official end of the recession in November 2001, there has been a 1.3
million loss in private sector jobs. Unemployment has risen to over 8.9
million people, as the unemployment rate increased from 4.0% in 2000 to 6.1%
in August 2003.

Jobs remain 2.4 million below the level of March 2001 when the last
recession began. This post-recession labor slump has now become the first
(since the collection of monthly jobs data began in 1939) without a full
recovery of jobs within 31 months of the start of a recession. Instead of
losing jobs over the last two and a half years, the economy should have
added 4.5 million jobs just to keep up with growth in the working-age
population. Actual job losses instead of needed job gains have created a
total gap of 6.9 million jobs. The record-long labor slump has caused many
people to give up on finding a job and created a "missing" labor force of
2.3 million. If added to the 8.8 million officially unemployed, the
"missing" labor force would raise the unemployment rate to 7.4%.

It takes monthly gains of about 150,000 payroll jobs and 155,000 in
household employment just to keep the gap in jobs since March 2001 from
widening further. Even with job gains of 306,000 a month, as promised by the
Administration early this year, it would take more than four years to close
the jobs gap that two and a half years of job losses have created.

The last "new jobs" number I saw was 130,000 jobs created in October. While
the administration touted this as a sign of recovery, in fact it means we
are still not closing the gap, an unbelievable situation considering the
huge deficits being generated by the current administration.