The recession killed off 7.9 million jobs. It's increasingly likely that many will never come back.
The government jobs report issued Friday shows that businesses have slowed their pace of hiring to a relative trickle.
"The job losses during the Great Recession were so off the chart, that even though we've gained about 600,000 private sector jobs back, we've got nearly 8 million jobs to go," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute.