Obama's America: Technically speaking, the economy has been in recovery since the summer of 2009 - yet after nearly four years of economic expansion, almost 12 million people remain unemployed

If we continue to add jobs every month at the April 2013 rate, not until the fall of 2014 will we again have as many people working as we did back in January 2008. And of course, the American workforce has expanded since January 2008 as young people reach working age and as new immigrants arrive. At present job creation trends, it will take until 2021 to drive the unemployment rate down to a rate that is considered "full employment." That seems unlikely to happen. The longest expansion in U.S. history lasted 10 years from 1991 to 2001. Even if we could somehow equal that record going forward, we would expect a recession sometime before 2019 - meaning that the unemployment rate will surely rise again before it has touched anywhere close to bottom.