Last week, Roosevelt Institute Senior Fellow Bo Cutter hosted Princeton economist and Wall Street Journal columnist Alan S. Blinder at the Next American Economy breakfast series, where the two discussed how much longer we'll have to wait before the U.S. recovery starts living up to its name. In the video below, Blinder tells Bo why he believes it will be a decade or more before the economy bounces back:

Asked when we'll reach full employment, Blinder says that "with the kinds of job creation numbers we've been having since we went from job destruction to job creation, the answer is almost never." He notes that even if the economy was creating 208,000 jobs per month, which is much better than we've done so far, it would take until 2024 for the job market to fully recover. "Relative to the U.S. history after recessions of recovering to full employment, that's just something that's never happened since the 1930s."

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Beyond the obvious bad news for those who are already looking for work, this kind of persistent jobs crisis spells trouble for young Americans. Blinder points out that "when you have what Marx would have called a reserve army of the unemployed, that's a very disadvantageous background for new job-seekers." Unemployment early in one's career can have long-lasting effects, and as of now, "you're talking about half a generation of young people, at least, graduating into a very weak job market."

For more, including Blinder's thoughts on the new structural pressures the U.S. will have to contend with in the years to come, check out his full talk: