'Hysteresis' -- a Greek Word Describing a Permanently-Broken American Workforce

deferred and the need to plot a new life. Zach Wolfe and Jonathan Sprague / Redux for TimeHopeTracker| If you’re presssed for time or have a short attention span, accept the fact the unemployment is a very serious problem in an American workforce that needs retooling. Moving out of the recession, the unemployment rate will not decline aggressively.

Go to page 3 (if you can when big coffee ads are chasing you around the page demanding that you hit “close”) and begin with “hysteresis’, a concept studied intensively by Laurence Summers. Imagine the ruler snapping. That’s it.

You cannot put that ruler back together again (recycling aside but an interesting metaphor, if you think about it).

Written by Joshua Cooper Ramo, managing director of Kissinger Associates, this TIME mag article Jobless in America: Is Double-Digit Unemployment Here to Stay? is an honest, sobering read. If you seriously believe there’s a yellow-brick employment road out of this recession mess, you will think again. Anne