It's almost too basic to say - people who aren't working aren't spending money. And businesses without sales can't hire, even as they work their existing employees beyond burnout.
For most of the decade, the unemployment rate hovered between 4.2 percent and 5.5 percent. But in May 2009, it topped 9.0 percent, and it has not budged below it, except for two months earlier this year.
Will robust employment ever return? If so, how?
Or, for a variety of reasons, is this the new normal?
We asked five experts to provide answers.
Mark Price
Mark Price is a labor economist for the Keystone Research Center in Harrisburg. He specializes in 
construction employment, women in the labor force and low-wage work.
Is this the new normal?
There is nothing normal about the current job market. The economy is clearly sick, but there are treatments for this illness. Elected officials in D.C., Trenton and Harrisburg could choose to invest in the foundations of a strong economy - things like education, workforce training, and infrastructure. Instead, they are making deep cuts that are costing jobs and putting a further drag on the economy at a time when the private sector is weak.
What would encourage hiring?
As Massachusetts has started to do, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania should bank at institutions that are not sitting on mountains of excess reserves, creating an incentive and moral pressure for more lending to small and medium-size businesses.
Pennsylvania should start a "Marcellus Jobs for Pennsylvanians" program to match out-of-work construction workers in the Commonwealth with openings in the drilling industry.
