South By North Strategies, Ltd.

From the Economic Policy Institute’s analysis of the national jobs report for February …

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the labor market has shed 8.4 million payroll jobs.  This number, however, understates the size of the gap in the labor market by failing to take into account continuing population growth: the labor market should have added around 2.7 million jobs since December 2007 to accommodate this growth.  This means the labor market is now roughly 11.1 million jobs below what would be needed to restore the pre-recession unemployment rate.  In order to fully fill in this 11.1 million job gap in the labor market in the next three years (by February 2013), employment would have to increase by 415,000 jobs every month between now and then.
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And even the 11.1 million jobs gap understates the slack in the labor market because it fails to take into account the decline in hours worked for those who have kept their jobs. At the start of the recession in December 2007, the length of the average workweek in the private sector was 34.7 hours.  In February, it was 33.8 hours.  The decline in the total number of hours worked in the private sector since the start of the recession attributable to reduced hours alone (i.e., not job loss) is equivalent to 2.8 million jobs.  This means that the “effective” gap in the labor market is on the order of 13.9 million jobs (11.1 million plus 2.8 million).