The U.S. unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high since the 2007-2009 recessionleading many to conclude that structural, rather than cyclical, factors are to blame. Relying on astandard job search and matching framework and empirical evidence from a wide array of labormarket indicators, we...

Since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009, the unemployment rate has recovered slowly, falling by only one percentage point from its peak. We find that the lackluster labor market recovery can be traced in large part to weakness in aggregate demand; only a small part seems attributable to...