Biz Beat: No easy answers at UW conference on unemployment. (Capital Times, 4/29/2011)

Excerpt: Now retired and living in Mount Horeb, Hime isn't confident the good factory jobs will ever return. And she takes exception to those who dismiss the current unemployment situation as simply a cyclical turn of the economy.

"People like me have been burned too many times," she says. "Why should they believe anything is going to change?"

Hime's comments Thursday were directed at a panel of national economic researchers on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus during a conference titled "Long-Term Unemployment in Industrial Countries: Causes, Consequences and Policy Responses."

Co-hosted by the La Follette School of Public Affairs, the discussion centered on whether the surge in joblessness both in the U.S. and Europe is the result of the recession or a sign of a deeper structural problem.

Although the recession -- defined by economists as a drop in gross domestic product over two consecutive quarters -- has officially ended, the jobs recovery has been tepid at best.

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