In today's hyper-paced, cost-conscience world, jobs can disappear in a flash, as we've seen in the past year.

An article on the MS-NBC's site from yesterday, subtitled "In the modern economy, industries vanish and it takes time to replace them" captures todays' world of work well. 

Labor market dynamics have changed dramatically in the past two decades.  In previous generations, mutual employer/employee loyalty helped to fuse together years of long-term employment at a single employer.  That world has gone virtually extinct in today's new short-term thinking, combined with today's economic challenges.  In today's world, productivity, performance, and the immediate economic landscape rule the day.

Today, "Most forecasts predict that Americans are in for a long, painful slog as they try to get back to work. Some forecasts don't have the unemployment rate getting back to "normal" levels of around 5 percent until 2014." We concur with this assessment.

That's not a pretty picture, but one that we have to anticipate as we consider two major forces: a fundamental change in employee/employer dynamics, and a very weak economic landscape.

While the employment rate actually dropped 0.1% in July, don't be fooled; that was just a statistical artifact of people dropping out of the labor force, not the beginning of a labor market resurgence.  The labor market always lags the overall recovery, so don't expect a sustainable improvement until the economy starts recovering and employers feels safe enough to start hiring again.