The U.S. economy will eventually rebound from the Great Recession. Millions of American workers will not.

What some economists now project ”” and policymakers are loath to admit ”” is that the U.S. unemployment rate, which stood at 9.6% in August, could remain elevated for years to come.

The nation’s job deficit is so deep that even a powerful recovery would leave large numbers of Americans out of work for years, experts say. And with growth now weakening, analysts are doubtful that companies will boost payrolls significantly any time soon. Unemployment, long considered a temporary, transitional condition in the United States, appears to be settling in for a lengthy run.

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Seldom has a Labor Day looked bleaker for U.S. workers. Then again, at least those Americans still have jobs.

Woeful numbers cast a heavy shadow on this national holiday. Nearly 15 million job-seeking Americans are counted in the 9.6 percent unemployment rate — and another two million have given up on finding work for now.

Here in South Carolina the situation is even worse, with official unemployment at 10.8 percent.

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Heavenly Father, we remember before you those who suffer want and anxiety from lack of work. Guide the people of this land so to use our public and private wealth that all may find suitable and fulfilling employment, and receive just payment for their labor; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

–Book of Common Prayer

My God, Father and Savior, since you have commanded us to work in order to meet our needs, sanctify our labor that it may bring nourishment to our souls as well as to our bodies.

Make us constantly aware that our efforts are worthless unless guided by your light and by your hand.

Make us faithful to the particular tasks for which you have bestowed upon us the necessary gifts, taking from us any envy or jealousy at the vocations of others.

Give us a good heart to supply the needs of the poor, saving us from any desire to exalt ourselves over those who receive our bounty.

And if you should call us into greater poverty than we humanly desire, save us from any spirit of defiance or resentment, but rather let us graciously and humbly receive the bounty of others.

Above all, may every temporal grace be matched by spiritual grace, that in both body and soul we may live to your glory.

—John Calvin

Loving Father,
on this weekend, when we rest from our usual labors,
we pray for all who shoulder the tasks of human labor””
in the marketplace, in factories and offices,
in the professions, and in family living.

We thank you, Lord, for the gift and opportunity of work;
may our efforts always be pure of heart,
for the good of others and the glory of your name.

We lift up to you all who long for just employment
and those who work to defend the rights and needs
of workers everywhere.

May those of us who are now retired
always remember the valuable contribution we make
to our Church and our world
by our prayers and deeds of charity.

May our working and our resting give you praise
until the day we share together in eternal rest
with all our departed in your kingdom
as you live and reign
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
one God, forever and ever.

Amen.

–The Archdiocese of Detroit

The number of Americans who were self-employed dropped in August to the lowest level in eight years, showing the economic recovery is not strong enough to nurture new businesses.

There were 8.68 million people working for themselves last month, the fewest since January 2002, according to Labor Department data released today. That’s down 13 percent from a record 9.98 million reached in December 2006, 12 months before the latest recession began.

Self-employment tends to increase during and immediately following economic slumps as tight labor markets prompt recently fired workers to venture out on their own, said Scott Shane, a professor of economics at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The data this time is testament to the lack of credit and a slump in demand that is choking small businesses, he said.

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Slow growth will have Washington seeking stimulus. This may be a better-than-expected jobs report, but the job growth is still very small. The economy needs to be adding hundreds of thousands of jobs every month to absorb new people entering the job market and put the unemployed back to work. So lawmakers may be looking for more stimulus. “There is a good chance that the Obama Administration will introduce a set of targeted economic stimulus programs,” [Sung Won] Sohn says. “Payroll tax relief to encourage new hiring for small businesses is a good possibility. State and local governments are laying off employees as revenue falls. Some assistance from Washington could stem job losses here.” Shortly after the release of the August jobs report Friday, President Obama encouraged lawmakers to pass a $55 billion bill that would provide additional loans to small businesses. Housing stimulus may also be coming–along with more unemployment benefit extensions, Sohn says.

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This coming Monday marks the second Labor Day of the Obama administration, and the American work force has little to show for it other than higher unemployment, stagnant wages, last year’s $1.4 trillion federal deficit, this year’s $1.3 trillion deficit, and next year’s anticipated $1 trillion-plus deficit. Oh, and a slew of new federal regulations and programs””like ObamaCare””that will make it even more expensive for businesses to retain current workers, much less create new jobs.

No wonder American confidence in the future is evaporating. And when confidence crumbles, consumers won’t spend, lenders won’t lend, investors won’t invest, and businesses won’t hire.

Today we see businesses husbanding cash rather than hiring. Nonfinancial S&P 500 companies are sitting on a record $837 billion. Personal savings are increasing dramatically, to over 6% of income today compared to barely 1% in 2005. Those small businesses still willing to take on more debt to expand are having tremendous difficulty finding credit.

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Glenn Manjorin, a Ringwood resident, hosts one of the many groups that take place around the New York/New Jersey metro area, and invited Suburban Trends to the Christ Episcopal Church in Suffern, N.Y. to take a look at how the other side of the recession is coping with what the media labels as “the new normal.”

Manjorin, who previously was a computer disaster recovery specialist and business continuity planner at IBM, is no stranger to how the recession is making people adjust their habits.

He explained that the group helps members out with what they labeled as the “elevator speech,” which emphasizes saying your name at the beginning and end of the speech, as well as keeping your work details within a 30-second timeframe to pitch to potential employers.

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2) Payroll tax cut is not a bad idea for stimulus, but U.S. has longer-term job and growth problem that needs to be addressed.

3) Payroll tax cut for $400 billion in early 2009 would have been better than Obama’s $862 billion plan.

4) Any short-term tax cut should be coupled with long-term deficit reduction plan.

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…the most effective tax cut for putting people back to work quickly is one that businesses and households get only if they spend money. Last year’s cash-for-clunkers program was an example. So was a recent bipartisan tax credit for businesses that hired workers who had been unemployed for months. Perhaps the broadest example is a temporary cut in the payroll tax for businesses, which reduces the cost of employing people.

Any of these steps would increase the budget deficit, obviously. But relative to the multitrillion-dollar, Medicare-driven, long-term deficit, a temporary tax cut costing a couple of hundred billion dollars isn’t significant. The more pressing problem today, by far, is the weak economy.

The great historical lesson of financial crises is that governments are usually not aggressive enough in responding. That was Japan’s mistake in 1990s, Herbert Hoover’s in the early 1930s and even Franklin Roosevelt’s in the mid-1930s.

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After being out of work for more than a year, Donna Ings, 47, finally landed a job in February as a home health aide, earning about $10 an hour, with a company in Lexington, Mass.

Chelsea Nelson, 21, started two weeks ago as a waitress at a truck stop in Mountainburg, Ark., making around $7 or $8 an hour, depending on tips, ending a lengthy job search that took her young family to California and back.

Both are ostensibly economic success stories, people who were able to find work in a difficult labor market. Ms. Ing’s employer, Home Instead Senior Care, a company with franchises across the country, has been aggressively expanding. Ms. Nelson’s restaurant, Silver Bridge Truck Stop, recently reopened and hired about 20 people last month in an area thirsty for jobs.

Both women, however, took large pay cuts from their old jobs ”” Ms. Ing worked in the office of a wholesale tuxedo distributor; Ms. Nelson used to be a secretary. And both remain worried about how they will make ends meet in the long run.

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Every seat in the Clarendon County unemployment office is taken on a typical weekday afternoon, and many of these people won’t find new jobs any time soon. That’s just the way it is here along South Carolina’s poor and rural Interstate 95 corridor.

So far this year, only one job opens for every three people sitting in the seats at the satellite office where folks travel for miles to file unemployment claims and apply for new work.

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The American economy could experience painfully slow growth and stubbornly high unemployment for a decade or longer as a result of the 2007 collapse of the housing market and the economic turmoil that followed, according to an authority on the history of financial crises.

That finding, contained in a new paper by Carmen M. Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland, generated considerable debate during an annual policy symposium here, organized by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, which concluded on Saturday.

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It increasingly seems as if the policy makers attending like physicians to the American economy are peering into their medical kits and coming up empty, their arsenal of pharmaceuticals largely exhausted and the few that remain deemed too experimental or laden with risky side effects. The patient ”” who started in critical care ”” was showing signs of improvement in the convalescent ward earlier this year, but has since deteriorated. The doctors cannot agree on a diagnosis, let alone administer an antidote with confidence.

This is where the Great Recession has taken the world’s largest economy, to a Great Ambiguity over what lies ahead, and what can be done now. Economists debate the benefits of previous policy prescriptions, but in the political realm a rare consensus has emerged: The future is now so colored in red ink that running up the debt seems politically risky in the months before the Congressional elections, even in the name of creating jobs and generating economic growth. The result is that Democrats and Republicans have foresworn virtually any course that involves spending serious money.

The growing impression of a weakening economy combined with a dearth of policy options has reinvigorated concerns that the United States risks sinking into the sort of economic stagnation that captured Japan during its so-called Lost Decade in the 1990s.

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Increasingly, the doctor is not in when it comes to delivering primary care. But the nurse practitioner or physician assistant is often taking the doctor’s place.

“We are ideally suited for it. And it’s so cost-effective compared to any other form of medical provider,” says Jim Love, a physician assistant from rural Pittsfield, Maine. “We need to be educating a lot more of us.”

Michael McDonald, the primary care physician who supervises Love from 25 miles up the road in Dexter, Maine, agrees.

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“The economy is going to limp along for the next few months,” said Gus Faucher, an economist at Moody’s Analytics. There’s even a one in three chance it could slip back into recession, he said.

Many temporary factors that boosted the economy earlier this year are fading. Companies built up their inventories after cutting them sharply in the recession to match slower sales. The increase provided a boost to manufacturers, but now many companies’ stockpiles are in line with sales and don’t need to grow as much. In addition, the impact of the government’s $862 billion fiscal stimulus program is lessening. That leaves the private sector to pick up the slack. But businesses are cutting back on their spending on machines, computers and software, according to a government report earlier this week. And the housing sector is slumping again after a popular home buyer’s tax credit expired in April.

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The number of Americans who are missing payments and falling into foreclosure has followed the upward trend in unemployment. The jobless rate has remained near double digits all year.

“Ultimately, the housing story, whether it is delinquencies, homes sales or housing starts, is an employment story,” Jay Brinkmann, the Mortgage Bankers Association’s top economist, said in a statement. “Only when we see a consistent increase in employment will we see an increase in sales and starts, and a sustained improvement in the delinquency numbers.”

More than 2.3 million homes have been repossessed by lenders since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.

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[Paul] Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”

Since an unusually sharp downturn accelerated in late 2008, the Obama administration and its allies in the U.S. Congress have enacted trillions in deficit spending they say will create an economic stimulus — but have not extended the Bush tax cuts and have pushed to levy extensive new health care and carbon regulations on businesses.

“They’re in a ‘Do’ loop right now trying to figure out what the answer is,” Otellini said.

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It’s 1 p.m. on a Thursday and Dianne Bates, 40, juggles three screens. She listens to a few songs on her iPod, then taps out a quick e-mail on her iPhone and turns her attention to the high-definition television.

Just another day at the gym.

As Ms. Bates multitasks, she is also churning her legs in fast loops on an elliptical machine in a downtown fitness center. She is in good company. In gyms and elsewhere, people use phones and other electronic devices to get work done ”” and as a reliable antidote to boredom.

Cellphones, which in the last few years have become full-fledged computers with high-speed Internet connections, let people relieve the tedium of exercising, the grocery store line, stoplights or lulls in the dinner conversation.

The technology makes the tiniest windows of time entertaining, and potentially productive. But scientists point to an unanticipated side effect: when people keep their brains busy with digital input, they are forfeiting downtime that could allow them to better learn and remember information, or come up with new ideas.

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…the only thing that will turn this mess around is jobs. Until this economy can put people back to work — and put them back to work gainfully, full-time, using their skills and not merely temping in some capacity way beneath their experience — it won’t be able to instill any confidence that buying a house is a good idea.

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Despite years of talk by Democrats and Republicans about the need to control spending, farm out work to private businesses and make government finances more transparent, the opposite has occurred.

Rather than becoming leaner, the state work force increased by 7.1 percent since 2005 — outpacing Oregon’s population growth.

The number of top state employees earning more than $100,000 a year more than doubled during the past decade.

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Every day, an average of 112 people — most of them the newly poor — sign up for free government health care in South Carolina.

Since the recession officially hit in December 2007, some 3,300 people a month, on average, have signed up for Medicaid in a state that outpaces the nation for poverty, obesity and diseases such as diabetes. Yet, South Carolina’s political leaders have been among the most vocal in the country in opposition of the new health care law….

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Working harder than ever these days? Get used to it.

The state’s chief economic forecaster John Rainey said Thursday that South Carolinians who have jobs are working harder than ever before and that record high productivity combined with new technological advances will keep unemployment higher for longer.

In other words, if companies can get by getting more out of less — they will.

“I think high unemployment, unfortunately, is here to stay,” Rainey said after analyzing state unemployment data and revenue collections at the Board of Economic Advisors meeting.

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The country got some more disappointing news about jobs on Thursday.

Initial claims for unemployment rose last week to a seasonally adjusted half a million, the first time since November that they have reached that level.

The Department of Labor said in its weekly report that the seasonally adjusted jobless claims climbed by 12,000 to 500,000 from the previous week’s revised 488,000.

Wall Street analysts had expected the seasonally adjusted claims to drop.

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The austerity measures that were supposed to fix Greece’s problems are dragging down the country’s economy. Stores are closing, tax revenues are falling and unemployment has hit an unbelievable 70 percent in some places. Frustrated workers are threatening to strike back.

The feast of the Assumption of Mary on Aug. 15 is the high point of summer in the Greek Orthodox world. Here in one of the country’s many churches, believers pray to the Virgin for mercy, with many of them falling to their knees.

The newspaper Ta Nea has recommended that the Greek government adopt the very same approach — the country’s leaders have to hope that Mary comes up with a miracle to save Greece from a serious crisis, the paper writes. Without divine intervention, the newspaper suggested, it will be a difficult autumn for the Mediterranean state.

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“Fundamentally this thing has been reshaped, resized and rethought,” Mr. [Sergio] Marchionne [of Chrysler] said of Detroit. The biggest difference, he said, is that the Big Three have finally broken the habit of reflexively raising incentives to increase sales volumes.

“We’re not trying to kill each other for this month’s market share,” he said. “Those days are over. We’re not offering $7,000 checks to try to sell a car.”

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Rosemary O’Neill’s employees weren’t sure whether to believe her when she announced a change in vacation policy early this year.

“When I said, ‘Unlimited paid leave, no strings attached,’ there was a moment of, ‘Are you punking us? Is this a joke?’ ” O’Neill says.

It was not a joke. O’Neill and her husband, Ted, own Social Strata, a small social media outfit in Seattle. Their business has joined a tiny but growing group: For the first time this year, 1 percent of U.S. businesses say they offer unlimited paid vacation.

For the O’Neills, the change started with an effort to help an employee in crisis. Their financial officer was struggling to care for a badly injured husband while also keeping up with her work. The O’Neills talked about letting her take off whatever time she needed. After all, she was a hard worker, and they trusted her. Then, they realized that was the case with all of their 10 employees.

“My husband said, ‘Well, why don’t we just do it for everybody!’ ”

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One problem that dogged Japan during its lost decade was a stop-and-go fiscal policy in which stimulus packages were administered in an “on again, off again” fashion and taxes were lowered and then raised. There is a risk that the U.S. could fall into this trap in an effort to strike a balance between short-term fiscal support and long-term budget integrity.

This strongly suggests that congressional leaders of both parties should embrace a pro-growth fiscal reform that would help to create long-run fiscal stability and foster certainty about future tax rates. With the 2001-2003 tax cuts set to expire at the end of 2010, the time is now to move ahead with broad-based reform.

A good starting point would be the bipartisan Wyden-Gregg tax reform bill. This bill is not incredibly bold, but is probably the best we could do in the current environment and is much better than the current tax code.

Wyden-Gregg would be revenue-neutral; it would simplify the tax code by reducing the number of personal income tax brackets to three from six and would do so without raising marginal income tax rates.

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