Rep. John Carter (R, TX) has posted a chart illustrating the depth and time to recovery of various recessions throughout recent U.S. history. The upshot is that the current recession has seen the largest drop in employment since 1948 and has been falling for as long as almost all job troughs have lasted, from start to finish. He goes on:

Unemployment continues to stand at an official 10% for the third month in a row, the worst joblessness in 27 years. The real unemployment rate is far worse. Included in the December economic figures was a shocker — the percentage of adult men who are working has fallen to the lowest level in recorded U.S. history at just 80%. That means that one in five men in this country between 18 and 54 are neither working nor claiming unemployment. They have fallen completely out of the workforce.
That helps explain why December’s unemployment rate remained at November’s 10% rate in spite of an additional 85,000 Americans losing their jobs. At the same time the new jobless claims were added, many of the previously unemployed were simply removed from the workforce numbers altogether.

And yet the big-government policies continue, with talk of yet more “stimulus” give aways to government workers and the politically connected. Little wonder the “anybody but Obama” ticket is starting to attract so much support.