US / Service dependent economy delays job recovery

The recession was the deepest one since the Great Depression. But slow job recoveries have become a defining trend of the past three recessions. It took the economy 37 months from the end of the 2001 recession to add back the jobs it lost. For the recession before that, which ended in 1991, it took 23 months. Yet about two decades earlier, it took just nine months to regain the jobs lost in the recession that ended in 1975 and six months for the one that ended in 1970.

New research by economists Martha Olney, at the University of California at Berkeley, and Aaron Pacitti, at Siena College, suggests that the economy is slower to recover jobs today because it has grown far more dependent on people doing things as opposed to making things.

Goods production supplied about three-fifths of economic output in 1950 and about half of its jobs. By 2010, growth in the service sector has accounted for two-thirds of output and seven out of every 10 jobs.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via Shift to a service-driven economy delays job recovery – The Washington Post.