by Calculated Risk on 11/07/2011 09:18:00 AM

If we continue to see sluggish growth with 125,000 payroll jobs added per month (the pace this year), it will take an additional 52 months just to get back to the pre-recession level of payroll employment.

If job growth picks up a little - say to 200,000 payroll jobs per month - it will take an additional 33 months to get back to the pre-recession level.

The following two graphs show these projections.

The dashed red line is 125,000 payroll jobs added per month. The dashed blue line is 200,000 payroll jobs per month.

Click on graph for larger image.

If we follow the red line path, payroll jobs will return to the pre-recession level in February 2016. The dashed blue line returns to the pre-recession level in July 2014.

And this doesn't include population growth and new entrants into the workforce (the workforce has continued to grow).

The second graph shows the same data but aligned at peak job losses.

This really illustrates both the depth of the 2007 employment recession and the very sluggish recovery.

The recent debate has been between another recession and sluggish growth (I thought sluggish growth was more likely), but we have to remember even sluggish growth is a disaster for payroll employment.