Erik Brynjolfsson, Andrew McAfee

The grim unemployment statistics puzzled many because other measures of business health rebounded pretty quickly after the Great Recession officially ended in June 2009. GDP growth averaged 2.6% in the seven quarters after the recession’s end, a rate 75% as high as the long-term average over 1948-2007. U.S. corporate profits reached new records. And by 2010, investment in equipment and software returned to 95% of its historical peak, the fastest recovery of equipment investment in a generation.
Economic history teaches that when companies grow, earn profits, and buy equipment, they also typically hire workers. But American companies didn’t resume hiring after the Great Recession ended. The volume of layoffs quickly returned to pre-recession levels, so companies stopped shedding workers. But the number of new hires remained severely depressed. Companies brought new machines in, but not new people.
Why has the scourge of unemployment been so persistent? Analysts offer three alternative explanations: cyclicality, stagnation, and the “end of work.”