Why Companies Won't Hire

In my column for CNN, I discuss some of the reasons why very few companies are currently hiring:

Even if we avoid a second recessionary dip, we're stuck on a very, very disappointing path. Call it the 1936 parallel.

From 1933 to 1936, the U.S. economy grew strongly, almost 10% a year. When supporters of President Franklin D. Roosevelt sang "Happy days are here again," they had reason to celebrate. By the end of 1936, U.S. output of goods and services had returned to 1929 levels. Corporate profits were surging. $100 invested in the stock market at the end of January 1933 would have multiplied to almost $350 in January 1937.

Yet even before that second slump, one economic indicator remained ghastly: unemployment. Even as output boomed, markets soared and profits bulged, an estimated 17% of Americans remained out of work.

Today likewise, things have returned more or less to normal for the affluent -- without taking much of a bite out of the unemployment numbers.

In fact, on our current trajectory, the U.S. will catch up to 2007 levels of economic output sometime in the next couple of months. Yet at the current job creation rate of a little north of 100,000 jobs per month, the U.S. economy will not recover its 2008-2009 job losses until the middle of the decade. And because so many distressed workers have quit the labor force altogether, the pace of job creation would have to double for the U.S. to see total employment rates return to pre-crisis levels before 2015.

What's the problem? Consider just these factors:

1. This past recession delivered its hardest blow to some especially labor-intensive industries: construction and retailing. Even as economic activity recovers, we're not going to see lots of new home building. Nor will we see people using their cash-out refinancings to go shopping at Best Buy. Americans are saving again. Those who have jobs are paying down debt.

2. Recessions lead to consolidations. Weak firms go broke, strong firms gain market share. The strong firms hire, the weak firms fire. But because the strong firms are more productive (that's why they are strong!), they do not hire nearly as many people as the weak firms have laid off.

Click here to read the full column.