Among the most pressing and persistent questions about the Great Recession are these: Why has the U.S. labor market been so slow to recover, leaving unemployment rates near nine percent more than two years after the official end of the recession? Why has the share of long-term unemployment (> 27 weeks) risen to such unprecedented levels, currently standing at about 45% of total unemployment?

The recent political battles over the pension and health benefits of state employees are sometimes portrayed in the press as a consequence of greedy public-sector unions winning overly generous concessions from short-sighted state legislators willing to promise unsustainable future benefits to solve immediate political problems. Something like this story may well be true in some states, but it is important to remember that as recently as 2000, state and local pension funds were in quite good shape.

When the U.S. housing bubble peaked in mid-2006 and finally burst in 2007, it precipitated the onset of the largest economic downturn since the Great Depression with severe consequences for the housing market. A record 2.9 million foreclosure notices were filed in 2010, 1.2 million were reported in the first half of 2011, and recent reports indicate that foreclosures are on the rise again.

The prolonged high rate of unemployment caused by the Great Recession has revealed substantial weaknesses in our nation’s social safety net. During and after the Great Recession, many families facing unemployment have relied on TANF, SNAP, SSDI, and unemployment insurance to provide income support. However, the eligibility requirements of these programs have often been too strict and the benefit levels too low to keep many families from falling into poverty.

Over the last 20 years, immigrant settlement patterns in the U.S. have changed dramatically. In 1990, 84 percent of new immigrants settled in California, Texas, or Illinois; by 2000, that number had dropped to just 53%. Increased immigration, restrictive laws in traditional destinations, and economic pull to new destinations have led to increasing geographic dispersion of new immigrants to parts of the U.S. that previously had little or no immigrant population. At the same time, immigrants, especially Mexican immigrants, have become an increasingly large section of our labor force.