This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

I ... the U S jobs recovery has been slow since the Great Depression ... during the recession the US shed over eight million jobs ... even after more than a year of steady growth were still six million in the hole ... let's take a look back at previous expansions ... to see how the U S employment picture shift ... since the nineteen seventies ... the U S job market has followed a pattern ... downturn ... recovery ... expansion ... the country loses jobs during the recession ... begins to make up the lost ground during the recovery ... and then start any new jobs in the expansion until a new downturn it's ... but a worrying trend develop in the nineteen nineties ... when the recovery took longer than in the past ... in two thousand the recovery was even more trouble ... not only was getting back to where we started a protracted affair ... but the expansion period was short ... and weak ... that expansion looks even worse when you take into account how much the population has grown over the past forty years ... that brings us the most recent downturn ... which produced an extremely severe job loss ... and a staggeringly slow recovery ... more than two years as the economy stopped hemorrhaging jobs ... were still over six million in the hole ... so what's wrong with the American jobs ... the simple answer is that the economy is growing far too slowly ... to include the available books ... but there's a deeper issue going on ... the past four decades of with this changes the makeup of the economy ... and the industries that dominate economic expansions have changed over the years ... a look back at past recessions of expansions offer some clues ... let's take a look of the recessions of the nineteen seventies ... enter into the decades to downturns in the US began adding jobs within eight months ... the expansions were powered by a few sectors ... government jobs grew strong pace ... as that employed in retail trade ... but the main driver was the manufacturing sector ... during the recession those companies may short-term temporary layoffs ... but as soon as the man returned they had to bring those workers back ... that pattern changed drastically in the nineteen eighties ... as the U S shifted to more of a services based economy ... most of the manufacturing jobs lost during the recession never came back ... instead the recovery was power primarily by growth in services industries ... the education health care bills were the primary drivers ... followed by professional and business services which includes jobs like accountants managers advertising ... computer professionals and other support staff ... the expansion the nineteen nineties told a similar story ... manufacturing remains moribund ... still growing slightly ... but the education health care sector was a big source of growth ... especially the healthcare industry ... the primary driver though was professional and business services ... some of that was due to the computer revolution which supply store in a decade ... but the use of temporary workers which are counted in that category ... with a bigger role ... when the temps soared during the nineties ... all that the job creation ... it also made it easier to eliminate positions going down to ... the weaker job covering the two thousands ... showed up companies were slow to hire back workers ... the primary driver of that expansion ... was the healthcare field ... the new professional and business services ... where companies continue to hire attempts ... manufacturing disappeared as a growth driver ... in fact even became a drag in the two thousands ... many who may have found work in that film previously ... made their way into construction positions in the housing boom ... that brings us to our current doctor ... we're still long way from getting back to where we were ... despite some recovery in manufacturing ... is still well below pre recession levels ... and while retail trade in professional business services have made up some ground ... they are also still well below levels seen before the recession ... government jobs wanted so badly by the downturn ... the recent cutbacks by state and local governments ... have started to push the numbers lower ... the only bright spot in health care ... but that sector alone won't be able to fill the hole of more than six million jobs but by the recession ... indeed ... if the pace of job creation observed over most of two thousand eleven which continue ... we would be back to pre recession levels until sometime in two thousand sixteen ... for The Wall Street Journal ... on the list ...