Yesterday, the Boston Globe reported:

On this Labor Day, 5 million Americans have been out of work for more than six months, a record number that forecasts a slow, difficult recovery and a long period of high unemployment, according to Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies.

Nationally, the average bout of unemployment has reached 25 weeks, the longest since the end of World War II, and is likely to increase as the jobless rate goes higher. Most economists expect the national unemployment rate, now 9.7 percent, to top 10 percent before peaking next year.

What’s more, the jobs picture may not substantially improve for a very long time. Given the size of the labor market and the numbers of unemployed (millions now chronically so), it is going to take a huge number of new jobs to put a dent in the unemployment rate. As I noted previously, this is problematic given the policies the administration is pursuing and the paralysis gripping employers.

This report explains:

In all, some 14.9 million people are out of work and looking for a job.

This means it will take several quarters of economic growth to put the unemployed back to work. About 125,000 jobs need to be created each month just to keep up with the natural increase in the number of job seekers from immigration and population growth. Even if that number is surpassed in coming months, it will take a very long time to make up all the lost ground.

The data show that unemployment is deep, widespread and lasting longer than usual.

The kicker: one group of prognosticators (Moody’s Economy.com) predicts that it will be 2014 before “the unemployment rate will finally dip toward 5 percent, considered to be the ‘normal’ level.” The economic and political ramifications of endemic high unemployment will play out over the next few years if this is correct.

Given all this, it is all the more remarkable how little attention is being devoted in Washington to private-sector job creation. At some point, the voters may notice that the Beltway crowd isn’t doing a thing — at least not anything helpful — about the most critical problem we are facing. Well, that and the mound of debt — which the administration and the Congress are also ignoring.