>> hello, i'm ray suarez. the country has recaptured all the jobs lost during the recession. more than 138 million people are working. but the population is grown and so has the workforce. a smaller share is at work than before the recession. to get back to the workforce participation we used to have we would need to create 7 million more jobs than we have now. even with modest job growth it has continued to grow since 2010. getting back to that overall recession number took some doing, better grab that legendary glass for a closer look. there are a lot of ways to figure out whether it's half empty or half full. >> so here's the good news, 217,000 more americans were added to the workforce in may. it's the fourth straight month of over 200,000 new jobs. the private sector led the way with professional and business services with 55,000 jobs. the healthcare jobs with 34,000 jobs, twice it's average monthly increase in the last year. the u.s. lost a tremendous number of jobs during the recession. hitting bottom in october 2009 when one in every 10 american workers was without a job. it took over six years but the economy finally replaced the jobs it lost in the recession. the overall employment situation is still mixed. millions of americans are on the side lines. burdened by an economy nursing itself to health. add the growth in population and labor force since the beginning of the recession in 2008, the u.s. is still short millions of jobs. 10million americans who could work are not. a third of those have been out of work for six months or longer. and in the six years since the darkest days earnings have been stagnant. in fact, hourly wages are lower now than when the recession technically ended in june of of 2009. that's largely because of the growth of low-paid jobs. the unemployment rate remains 6.3%. a large problem of slow job recovery assailedder americans holding on to their jobs. the country's aging population has hit their younger counterparts hardest. more than 15% of millennials are without work. 2million of whom have stopped looking for work all together. >> the health of the job market. on the mend or just treading water. that's what we'll look at this time. demographic realities and the kind of jobs people are gaining. we're joined here in washington adam hirsch. from boston, kathy robinson, and also here in d.c. mike bray, the owner of hobby works. when you looked at the numbers and the numbers behind the numbers, how did they look to you? >> the there is good news and bad news. the good news as you mentioned is that the economy has been an isn' consistent trend. and we've recovered all the jobs that were lost since the start of the great recession. but the bad news is that the unemployment problem is still very pervasive it's and much worse than the 6.3% unemployment rate would imply. that's how we contemplate that particular stake. take--statistic. and i don't know them, 7 million people, we have another 7 million people who are working part time because they can't get enough hours at work even though they want more. these are not jobs that will lead to middle class standards of work. >> is that something that seemed about right to you? are you seeing more activity in your line of work? >> you know, absolutely i am. there are a lot of employer who is are starting to get of off the dime and make offers in a way they haven't been. and jobs searches were taking forever. and obviously it's still in mixed america at the moment. there are sectors that are taking off again and have new life. and then there are still new people who are 60 years old and their 80-year-old parents are supporting them. it's all over the map, but it gives us a lot of room for hope. >> mike, when you heard those numbers, are you seeing it as a retailer? do you have customers who have more money to spend? >> you know, anecdotally i just came back from a big industry conference from las vegas, and anecdotally we were all feeling like our customers are feeling like things are going to get better. but this support as adam said. no one was reporting significantly improved sales. i think the answer is a mixed bag. we have not seen a lot of it on the ground, but we feel like our customers are feeling better and as a result we're feeler more hopeful. is the hobby sector a sensitive industry? >> we don't sell anything that anybody needs. but in the past i felt it was recession resistant. but this recession seeming to so much deeper so fast, so much faster than previous dips this is one of the eastest things for people to cut out. it's been a long time coming back, and the big-ticket sales have not come back. >> how have you handled that as an employer? >> we've run as lean as we possibly can. before the show i was saying i feel like i'm running the business now at 19 years in much the same way i was running it when i first started it. very lean, very mean, trying to make sure that every dollar is not wasted. >> kathy robinson, are there people coming off the sidelines? that's been one of the constant features of the reporting on the jobs recession that a lot of people simply took themselves out of the workforce when they see this kind of numbers. they start thinking about coming back. >> yeah, i've been getting a ton of calls about that. there were a lot of people who called themselves the consultant for the past couple of years because they tried in the job market. nothing was happening. they're start to go kick the tires, look out there and see conversations with people. and companies are receptive to people who have been out on their own for a while in a way i haven't seen recently. there has been more, let's test again and see if i can land this time. >> adam, let's talk more about workforce participation. for a lot of economists that has been one of the worrying numbers of this whole last decade. >> what's been worrying the labor force participation rate has come way down. that's one of the reasons why the unemployment rate is reflecting a decline even though we still see so many people out there unemployed and looking for work. and the worrisome thing there is just that you know we don't have people who are engaged in the workforce, and while they're sitting out they're losing valuable skills. they're deteriorating as they're not keeping up-to-date with the latest technologies that they're learning on the job. >> but does that create openings for younger workers? >> it creates openings where there is demand out in the economy, and businesses see that there are customers to sell to, and a need to hire people to meet that demand. and right now we're seeing a demand in the economy very low. the house old consumers are constrained by stagnant incomes. they're constrained by prices rising in key things that are important to middle class livelihood, healthcare, higher education, child care. that's not what is creating the openings. really, we're not creating enough jobs for all the people who want them. that's why we're seeing the labor force shrink so much. >> you talk a lot to employers. how did they explain their reluctance even when they needed workers at some point. they were laying on more overtime. they were laying on more sick days rather than hiring new people. what did they need to see that helped clinch the deal for them? >> it's a chicken and the egg question, right? if you build up the infrastructure and the work doesn't come you have a very bloated payroll waiting for the customers to come to your door. yet there are people reaching out right now who are very talented. each company is having to make it's own decision about how big do we get in anticipation of this possible growth that we're seeing. and you know, they're adding. they're definitely--there are jobs, as the labor market is showing us, in certain sector, yes. in other sectors, no. there is activity, but they're being cautious with what they're doing. >> are you lucky or unlucky from geography. markets come back from different paces. how is boston looking? >> boston itself has been doing great. it has really seemed to be in. jump start recently. in western massachusetts, for example, there are lots of towns where during the recession companies closed up shop. they left. they outsourced, and those towns are struggling. there are lower level of jobs that have come back-to-back fill. >> we'll come back and talk about older workers who are retiring a lot earlier than they planned, and younger workers who are having a tough time getting their careers going. this is inside story. stay with us. >> every saturday join us for exclusive, revealing, and surprising talks with the most interesting people of our time. grammy award winning singer, songwriter angelique kidjo >> music transforms lives of people >> inspiring strength >> read, be curious your brain is your ultimate weapon >> hope for the future >> the only thing that can transform my continent is girl's education >> talk to aljazeera only on al jazeera america >> tomorrow on the stream. the superstars. >> i love the underdog role, it's us against the world. we have this fight and this pride to play for the country. >> pushing for success. >> we've gone so far forward, the game's really really grown. >> gaining popularity. >> people are crazy for it. >> is now the time for u.s. soccer? >> anything is possible. i believe that this u.s. team, we can beat anybody. >> the stream, tomorrow 5:30 eastern. only on al jazeera america. you're watching inside story, i'm ray suarez. there has been concern in the great recession about wages. in more than six years after the recession began the average worker has seen a raise of $20 a week. slim paychecks have meant less money to spend. businesses whose customers are spending less can find more equipment, hire more employees. you get the idea. and did you realize how pad things were going to get when this all first started? >> no. in fact, like a lot of thigh friends in business i felt like we weathered the recession with the tech crash, and we weathered the early 90s, when i started, and i felt like we've got an answer to this, and we're going to be fine. and it got worse and worse when we started restructuring the business including laying off a layer of management. did it mean that you could bargain harder with the people that you buy things done? bargain harder for retail space. everyone was suffering at the same time. >> we did. we did that. we renegotiate the every single one of our leases to benefit us. which was a good thing. we were able to negotiate harder with our we know ders, particularly when we still had a lot of cash. it's easy to go to a supplier who is sitting on a pile of inventory and wave some money around. and you know, get some good deals. all of those things combined to help us, but they weren't enough to get us back to pre-recession levels. what it did was help us to get through. but we're still not on the other side of this thing. we're still not feeling like we're anxious to go out. we want to open more stores, but we're not feeling like we did, say, in 2006, which was the store we opened in baltimore. >> yesterday on the program, adam, we were talking about the brick that college costs have put on young people, even young people years out of college. is this something that will slow the recovery and have a longer tail than anyone of us have realized? >> yes. the cost of college and the mountains of debt that students are graduating with now will have a long-term effect on the economy and their lives. it's taking income that they could be using for consumption, and using it to pay those debts. there is a lot left over for other things in their lives. it's going to delay them from buying a house and making adequate retirement savings, it will delay them from starting families. the jobs they have now, as you talked about, have lower wages on average than they might have had in the past. >> during the worst of it, a big chunk of young workers who graduated college were doing work that normally doesn't require a college education. are we starting to see some improvement there? >> so economists have talked about this as breaking the job ladder. the way people progress up to better and better jobs through their lifetime and career. what's been happen something because there is such a scarcity of jobs out there in the labor market, people who have more kills are taking the jobs openings that usually would have been filled by people with lower skills. and people with lower skills are left in the lurch. >> what about at the other end of the career ladder. if you had to do some career downwardment during the worse of the recession, are you now defined as that lower job, or can you aspire to get back on the rung of the ladder you were at before all this happened? >> especially at the senior level a lot of job movement happens when you're connected to a former colleague, etc. the strength that network people have still allows them to get back to where they were. but desperate times call for desperate measures, you have to take a lower level job to get by, but there is more openness to now show us what you can do. >> what about that 5 59- or 61-year-old person who ended up stopping work all together years before they had planned to, could they be coming back into the workforce? >> they absolutely are. i'm working with a few now and it's progressing and they're in the offer stages. companies are open to it. a lot of called themselves consultants as i said before, but i definitely think they're experiencing optimism about the market in a way that has not been true post recession. they're trying. they're putting their toe in the water to see if this is the right time for me to actually get back, get challenged, learn something, contribute. >> if that works, mike, there may be more people in your stores buying trains. >> y, absolutely. people who lost their jobs, and the jobs that are having trouble coming back, which are the ones in the middle, that's my core customer group. the middle income to upper middle income. people with disposable income, people with leisure time. i need people who have time, which people don't if they're working two and three jobs, and i need people who have extra money for things they don't need like as personal drone, helicopter or train. >> is this something that you can do in your product mix? >> we've done all those kinds of things. we're much more invested in the stem technology . we're partnering with those people. robot i cans i ics, all of those things have been nice. the recession forces you to get out or get to work on your business. my hope is we spend a lot of time working on our business, and getting it to where i think we're in a great place. we would like to see those numbers go up, where that turns into additional sales. >> meanwhile, even with all the negative publicity, it had it's greatest name for a long, long time. people are replacing stock cars that they kept on the roads two to three years longer than they planned to. >> that's going to natural happen with the inventory cycle when people buy cars. big ticket items. with interest rates still low and with interest rates expected to go up in the near future as a federal reserve withdraws its stimulus providing it's economy. the people who have the where with saul to make those purchases are looking ahead to say this is going to be more expensive for me in the future. >> stay with us. we're going to take a short break. when we come back we'll talk about what a healthy job market looks like. what we will look for in the next several months to know whether this recent momentum is for real, and have the seeds of a real recovery. this is inside story. >> al jazeera's investigative unit has tonight's exclusive report. >> stories that have impact... that make a difference... that open your world... >> this is what we do... >> america tonight next only on al jazeera america america mobile app, available for your apple and android mobile device. download it now >> welcome book inside story. i'm ray suarez. jobs on this edition of the program, how many the u.s. has, how many it needs, and whether this economy is capable of the job creation, the labor demand we saw in the 1990s. still with us in washington, adam hirsh, from boston, kathy robinson , and also here in d.c. the owner of hobby works. kathy robinson, what does the recovery look like to you? >> i've been seeing it recently over the past couple of years in particular. >> talking about employers who listed job openings, did interviews, collected resumés and never made hires. does that start of thing start to go away? as we move up to a cycle? >> i have a client at the moment who was first contacted in october about a job, and they said we're not quite ready. we like you . then this week they have been in conversations. again something that was put on hold. they explored it, but now i feel like they're ready to go again. >> adam hirsh, a lot of economists we have spoken to oh in the program over the last six months. have been glad about the positive trend of the numbers but withholding their undiluted praise for what's going on. what do you need to see before you really pop the cork? >> i would say i'm in the same boat there. we're happy that the job market is recovering, we're seeing it move in the right direction but it's not at a pace that is adequate to bring down unemployment in a meaningful way. what i'm looking for when i look at the health of the job market is, one, the number of the jobs. we need to be well above where we are now to be bringing down unemployment. and the second thing is i'm looking for confidence in workers who are in the labor market. are people willing to leave jobs? are they reentering the labor market if they left before because they have expectations that there are better opportunities throughout. >> with them reentering, we could have big months and the unemployment rate won't come down. >> that's right. as the job market picks up we may see the unemployment rate flatten out or come up as people look for work. >> how will you know that you've turned the corner? >> there are a couple of ways we look at these things. we would like to see big ticket sales come back a little bit stronger. we would like to see people buying that extra accessory at birthdays, christmastime, not just buying a particular item but maybe a couple of things to go with it. we see higher average ticket. we see thosed a-on sales of profitable accessories. then we'll start to feel like, o.j. we'll see a light at the end of the tunnel. >> that would change the way you order, it would change the way you hire. >> it would change the way we order. it would change the way we hire. and the way we open a store. we're doing the same thing with our lease negotiations that kathleen has been talking about employers have been doing. we've been sniffing around for space. >> are the next six months really going to tell the story whether this is on its way back? >> absolutely. >> even if we grew now at the pace of job growth that we grew in the 1990's boom it's going to be a long time before we get back to a heavily of full employment level which is really the only time we see broad gains, wages and incomes throughout the economy. >> kathy robinson, when there are more employers looking for employees, and employers looking for help. that's when we get back to the 1990's territory. >> obviously we have a way to go before that gigantic boom, and as the workforce ages we'll looking at that in the future. but it's nice to see that there is motion going on. people are leaving jobs and companies are willing to tak take a gamble and bring people on board. >> will you have to hire yourself? bring more people in the office? >> i run a virtual team. but my husband who owns a construction company is bringing people on staff with this looking-forward confidence that we've been talking about the whole show. >> when a construction worker or contractor is busy, then we'll know that things are truly back. kathy robinson, mike gray, adam hirsh, thank you for joining us today. that brings us to the end of this edition of inside story. thanks for being with us. the program may be over but the conversation continues. we want to hear what you any the issues raised on this or any day's show. log on to our facebook page or send us your thoughts on twitter. our handle on twitter is aj inside story am or reach me directly @ray suarez news. we'll see you at the next "inside story." in washington i'm ray suarez. >> on "america tonight": the child abuse scandal that's rocked britain. a beloved celebrity. the scandal almost incredibly widens. >> that's probably the tip of an iceberg. something like 1500 individual over a number of decades. >> also tonight, stopping the shooting in california's meanest city, the street capitalist that put cash on a in