New unemployment data is revealing why it will take the labor market years to recover from what has been one of its fastest and deepest declines since World War II, even as experts assure us economic recovery is around the corner, the Washington Post reported.

 

On Friday, the Department of Labor released a report that showed job cuts in August were lower compared with the numbers in recent months.

 

Still, unemployment for teenagers is 26% and more than 758,000 unemployed workers grew so discouraged they quit looking for jobs altogether. In total, about 14.9 million people are out of work and looking for a job.

 

Such data points to the fact that it will take many quarters of economic growth before the unemployment rate drops significantly. About 125,000 jobs need to be created each month just to keep up with the natural increase in the number of job seekers from immigration and population growth, the Washington Post reported.

 

Currently, the unemployment rate is 9.7%, which is up from 4.7% before the recession began in December 2007. Experts predict unemployment will reach 10% by the end of this year. According to Moody’s Economy.com the unemployment rate won’t fall to 5% (considered the “normal” level) until 2014.

 

About 7.4 million more people now are unemployed since the recession began with the average worker finding themselves out of a job for 24.9 weeks: the highest level since the Department of Labor started tracking the figure in 1948. And some 4.98 million people are finding themselves unemployed for longer than 27 weeks. About 9 million people who said they would rather work more hours have been forced to take on part-time work.

 

The retail industry as a whole has lost 829,000 jobs since the recession started and consumers pulled back spending, including 10,000 jobs lost in August.