"The U.S. recession officially ended in June of 2009, but most Americans don’t feel like we are in a recovery. That’s because it’s been a weak recovery, with the size of the economybarely bigger today than it was four years ago, when the recession started.

"Since America is a rich country, it is not growth itself that matters most but employment and, of course, the distribution of income. And the employment numbers are just terrible.

"The simplest measure is the percentage of the working-age population that is employed. That peaked at 63.4 percent in December 2006. It plummeted to a low of 58.2 percent last July and is hardly different now – 58.5 percent in the latest figures.

"What this means is that we need about 10 million jobs to get back to full employment.....

"And as my colleague Dean Baker pointed out, the latest jobs numbers have probably been over-optimistic. Realistically, he notes, at present trends of job growth we will not hit full employment until 2028. This would be an economic failure of disastrous proportions.

"Looking at it from the unemployment side, the U.S. government has a broader measure of unemployment that includes people who are involuntarily working part-time and people who have given up looking for work. This is currently at 15.2 percent of the labor force, or 23.7 million people who need work.

"To make matters worse, we have had record numbers out of work for more than six months – more than 40 percent of the unemployed over the last two years. Long-term unemployment is much more devastating for workers and their families. And recent research shows that even this measure underestimates the current long-term hardship in the labor market.

"Although there has been some fear of the economy lapsing into recession again, the more likely scenario in the foreseeable future is slow growth with intolerable levels of unemployment, along with rising poverty and inequality, and accompanying social ills.

"The biggest burden we are carrying is the economic illiteracy of our leaders, for which Americans are paying a very steep price."