Private employment last month remained well below its level when the recession began, and only in May had it climbed above its level when the recession ended. This situation contrasts sharply with the beginning of most postwar recoveries (although, as I will discuss later, not with the one in the early 1990s), when employment surged.
Similarly, with employment growth until recently having been wanting, the unemployment rate peaked more than a year and a half after the recession ended and has not yet fallen below its level at the time designated by the National Bureau of Economic Research as the economic trough.