On September 2, PBS’s News Hour interviewed Mark Zandi, lead economist with Moody’s Analytics.  His normally optimistic tone has become quite pessimistic, in fact he’s now saying that any U.S. economic recovery will take a long time, specifically when it comes to jobs.

Regarding unemployment caused by government layoffs: “The government, state, local, federal, is now laying off about 50,000 jobs per month. So, you know, you can kind of do the arithmetic. Those are pretty significant job losses. I am hopeful that we’re seeing the worst of it right now. Many states are grappling with the end of some fiscal stimulus money.   And they need to balance their budgets, and thus the cutting at the current time. But, nonetheless, no matter how you look at it, we have got some pretty significant job cuts to come in, in the state and local sector over the next year, 18 months.”

Regarding how long unemployment will remain so high: “I mean, I think, no matter how you look at it, this is going to be a long haul. And under even the most optimistic of forecasts, and I’m among the most optimistic economists out there, it’s not going to be until 2015, 2016, maybe even 2017, before we get back to an unemployment rate that I think everyone would feel really comfortable with.”