A few weeks ago the Bureau of Labor Statistics issued numbers concerning the unemployment rate as of November 2009. In the report they stated that if discouraged workers, (those you have quit looking for work), and the underemployed, (those who are working part time but would like to work full time), were included in the unemployment rate the rate would actually be over 17%.
Now this is a horrid number to be sure, but the question I would pose is can we expect much better, and in fact should we expect worse?
Employment over the past twenty years was fueled by two seperate things. In the 90's when we were near full employment a lot of job growth was in the IT sector and due to the IT revolution. A singular event which caused there to be massive investment in totally new technologies. Ask anyone who was in IT in the 90's and they will tell you that sector of the employment picture deflated and wont likely come back to where it was. After the turn of the century employment was fueled by the construction industry and the financial services sector. Both of these sources of employment were fueled by the housing bubble and the wealth it created. While it may be possible to re-ignite some form of bubble economy, (expecially with all the capital the Fed has injected into the economy), I hardly think that operating your economy on the basis of investment bubbles can be considered healthy.
If we look at a couple of the powerhouse exporters, Germany and China, neither has outstanding employment levels. These countries supply the world with many of their goods.
As has been mentioned elsewhere here the government is currently fueling much of the economic activity that exists, and their levels of funding are unsustainable. Currently about 10% of GDP is debt driven government spending. That will be rolled back.
It is hard to imagine per capita consumption in the U.S. increasing by much. Surely there is a boatload of people at the lower end of incomes who could consume more than they do given the right circumstances. The only problem is that we already saw the limiting power of commodity prices on growth at the end of the housing bubble. When the economies of the world do start to grow again, they may do so robustly for a short spell, but the price of oil, copper, etc, will strangle the long term potential of the growth, and so the employment gains.
So subtract the government spending, add the potential growth, it is a zero sum gain for the most part.
So 15% unemploymentmay not be catastrophic after all, it may be the norm.