Calculated Risk: About 2.4 million jobs could be added inthe U.S. for 2011. Click “Read more” for graph.
Calculated Risk comments:
However, this doesn’t mean the unemployment rate will decline significantly. The economy needs to add about 125,000 jobs per month to offset population growth, and I expect the participation rate to increase too – so any decline in the unemployment rate will be slow.
With over 15 million unemployed workers – and 6.3 million unemployed for more than 26 weeks – adding 2.4 million private sector jobs will not seem like much of job recovery for many Americans.
Note: GEI has predicted the U.S. unemployment rate will remain in the 9-10% range throughout 2011. This is not incompatible with adding 2.4 million new jobs, as explained in the comment by CI.