indicators, monitor them. there's an overwhelming message when we look at those indicators that is consistent only with the new recession starting here. if you think back to 2008, when we made that call, then it was prior to the lehman crisis economists were looking backwards at gdp. and all they saw was positive gdp. >> once we saw the lehman crisis everybody was on board with the fact there was a recession. before that there was a question. >> correct. when you see gdp positive or jobs numbers positive, you say there isn't a recession and you get pushback. time will tell. >> harvard professor ken rogooff is chief economist for international monetary fund. you've been on the show before. your point of disagreement, you say a lot of people feel the recession never ended. now, we are four years away from the official start of this recession. it started in december of 2007. we're certainly three years into the worst of it. where do you think this ends? >> well, i think we may be going very slowly for a long, long time. lakshman is right. it could get worse before it gets better. it was a pretty mediocre jobs report. it's hard to distinguish this from whether we are or not already in a recession. >> all right. i want to take this to some of the frustration people are feeling. the "occupy wall street" protests are going on three weeks now and spreading to other cities. unfocused as they may be, the movement even got the attention of the president. >> you're still seeing some of the same folks who acted irresponsibly trying to fight efforts to crack down on abusive practices that got us in this problem in the first place. yes, i think people are frustrated. the protesters are giving voice to a more broad-based frustration about how our financial system works. >> chrystia freeland, editor of reuters digital. here's the thing, the president alluded to this in a different part of his speech, how about taking these protests and picketing the lawmakers who are blocking the protection bureau from fully functioning. it was designed to protect people from the banks that got us into this financial mess in the first place. whether that's a solution or something else, how do you focus the anger, random anger of these people occupying wall street into something meaningful that could actually result in positive change? >> i think you're right, ali, to point to the fact this is a movement at the moment which is about protest and anger and frustration with the way the economy works, the way the economy is structured. it is less a movement that has a very clear agenda for how to fix it. in that way, i would contrast it with the tea party. i think in some ways the grievances are -- >> contrast did not compare -- >> i think grievances are the same. i think grievances are legitimate. i think the bottom line is the american economy right now is not working for a broad swath of the american middle class. that is not the deal in america, not part of the american social compact. people are angry about it and right to be. the difference is the right has a clear point of view about the culprit and how you fix it. the view on the right is government is too big. if government shrinks, everything will be okay. the view on the left. the economy isn't working, bankers are probably getting too big a share, but there is a less coherent answer to how you fix this unbalanced economy. i think that's why we're seeing "occupy wall street" protests have a less clearly defined agenda on the changes they want. >> although, ken, it starts to look like class warfare. there are some who say the part that's broken about our economy is that everybody doesn't have a chance to become prosperous. it's disproportionate. with these protests, what you're seeing are things, direct hate towards the rich, hate towards the banks which we know noticed -- need to operate. we're getting into this weird situation, maybe it's high unemployment or inequality in the economy, but it is developing into class warfare. we didn't really think we'd see protesting in the streets of america the way we're seeing. >> yeah, i mean, if we have unemployment drag on, teenager unemployment they reported, almost 25%, when you have so many young people unemployed without hope, discouraged, it's a very, very volatile situation. sure, if we get better in a year or two, it will be fine. i do worry where this will go. kris ya is absolutely right. there's a huge undercurrent of anger. you see it in the tea party, wall street protest, see it when you talk to people. where will that go, in our political system, what will it bring in the election, what will it bring. i think that is a very tough question for america. >> just jumping on that, with the teenager unemployment, long-term unemployed, i think that's really the issue. i'm not getting into the politics but when you look at business cycles, more frequent recessions, what we have in front of us, we're not going to have the unemployment rate go way down any time soon. it's right now about to jerk back up noticeably. so that kind of unrest or idle hands, as it were, you're going to get a lot of pushback. >> we'll talk after commercial more specifically about jobs and how to solve them. let me ask you this, for the people occupying wall street or the streets of these other cities right now, they probably think the conversation that you and chrystia and i have about whether it's a new recession we're going into or the same one, highly academic. how do your forecasts show things changing on the ground for people, separate from unemployment. are there other measures people will feel if we have another recession. >> absolutely. i will not debate this is a bad economy even prior to going into a new recession. make no mistake, when you go into a new recession, even if it's mild, it's worse. jobs are weaker, sales, income, production, all of those are going to be slipping. news flash, it's happening around the world, not just here. this is a global issue as well. we're not going to get out of this very easily. >> i think the other element -- >> europe going into a recession too. >> the other element, which is really important and you alluded to, ali, it's not the same for everyone. the pain is concentrated in a particular group. if you're unemployed it's really bad. >> for some people -- >> if you don't have job security it's really bad. >> for some people they didn't feel a recession the first time it came around. >> for some people it's terrific. look at luxury goods sales. those are fantastic. some people who are doing incredibly well with the technology revolution, with globalization and that's part of the reason you see the anger in the streets. people see that. >> we all agree if we had a lower unemployment number, greater job creation, it would certainly get us a long way to the solution. we are all seeing. all of you stay there for a second. stay where you are. jobs report came out better than expected. is it meaningful enough to put this recession talk on hold? 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[ male announcer ] want great taste and whole grain oats that can help lower cholesterol? honey nut cheerios. and all we need to do is change the way we're thinking about them. a couple decades ago, we didn't even realize just how much natural gas was trapped in rocks thousands of feet below us. technology has made it possible to safely unlock this cleanly burning natural gas. this deposits can provide us with fuel for a hundred years, providing energy security and economic growth all across this country. it just takes somebody having the idea, and that's where the discovery comes from. 8.7 million jobs lost since the recession began. numbers like we saw in september won't do much to aid the meaningful recovery we all so desperately want an need. let me show you the september jobs report. there were an increase of 103,000 jobs. that was actually more than economists had expected. the numbers for august and july were typically -- they were always revised. they were revised higher. painted a little better pick. the unemployment rate still remains stubbornly high. 9.1%. this far into the recession while that's a politically popular number to talk about, it's less relevant than the number of jobs actually created. in the private sector, that's where we want to see more jobs created, 137,000 jobs were created. the government continues to shed jobs, 34,000 jobs were lost in the government. lakshman, in a recovery, not the recession you think we might be in or going into or the one ken agrees has never really improved since this recession substantially, in a real recovery, what does jobs report look like? not only the number of jobs created, number of jobs created but where and what type? >> well, across the board, a recovery is going to be pervasive so it's not going to be limited to one area of the economy. that's key. it has to be pervasive. i think we saw what it looks like at the beginning of this year. between february and april the economy was creating about a quarter million jobs a month. that's about as good as it gets for the u.s. economy if you look over the last 10 years. whenever we reach that pace, that's about as fast as we can go on jobs creation. so it's critical we have a long expansion. here in this recovery that i believe is ending, we had over two years of gdp being positive and since 2010 created about 2 million jobs. in your lead in you said we lost 1.7 during the recession, we didn't have time to recover that. >> you told me, it takes a long time to ever recover all of the jobs you lose in any recession. >> absolutely. see this is the thing, all of our recent memory is about the 2000, the 1990s, the 1980s. the 2000 was a record length of expansion, a decades long expansion, over 20 million jobs. that's our goal. we need to see something like that. >> you have often said that's not likely. >> that is just not -- the fundamental problem is we're not going to get that any time soon. we're back to short expansions. that's actually normal from 1799 to 1829, 90% of expansions are three years or less. in the '70s, it was the same way. that's where we lived now. that's the problem. >> this is going to make my next question to ken particularly complicated. ken, when we started this recession unemployment 5%. a term many economists used to represent full employment. you can argue whether that's right or wrong. we were at 5%. in the recession the projections from the federal reserve were that we would get down to that 5% level by about 2013. everybody gasped and said oh, my goodness, that's a long way. ben bernanke started to stretch that out a little bit. the newest numbers, projections indicate around 2017 before we are there. is there any way to make that glass look half full? >> no, i'm afraid not. i think after you have a deep financial crisis, this kind of contraction, recession is typical. it's hard to come out of it. frankly if you talk to businesses, they are not seeing much sales growth. maybe 1% or 2%. they don't need to hire more people, they can buy ipads or something to get the extra output. i think we're not going to see rapid growth. consumers are hurting. their housing prices have collapsed. they are overindebted. they are worried about their work. you're not going to see that demand feed into the business. wanting investments. our exports have not been as good as we liked. >> chrystia, we heard from the economists, paint a picture politically, we know demand is what causes jobs to grow. we know indebtedness can only be solved by an increase in income. you only increase income if you've got more jobs. we know we're not going to get back to where we are for a long time. the president wants better jobs numbers if nothing else to save his own job. is there anything in this jobs bill that he's presenting that would significantly bring down unemployment in this next year we're talking about, the next politically important year. i'm not really hearing that from these two guys. >> i think actually the jobs bill is a good bill. i think it would make a difference. i don't think it would move the dial hugely but it would help. the bigger issue, i think the political chances of that bill passed certainly in its entirety, maybe in parts, is not that great. so i think the political issue that the president faces is how does he present that. i think the choice we've seen him make is the choice that i think a lot of people feel he should have made a year or year and a half ago, which is rather than seeking compromise behind closed doors, to go out publicly and aggressively and say this is my program. if we were able to pass that program, we could improve things. i think the real dilemma for the president is what professor rogoff was pointing to his excellent research on financial crises and what happens afterwards is the recovery from those crises is longer and more painful than the typical recession we are familiar with. and that is something really, really hard politically to deal with. on top of that, i think there are big structural issues in the economy. structural issues that tend to make unemployment a more difficult issue to grapple with. we kind of didn't feel those structural issues because the credit bubble hid them. the credit bubble meant there were lots of construction jobs, lots of consumer spending. you had your house as your atm and you could easily borrow money on your credit card. that's all gone. really america is now coping with how to restructure its economy in the age of globalization and technology revolution when as professor rogoff said you buy a few ipads instead of hiring more people. >> thanks to all of you. we'll continue this discussion. ken rogoff, chrystia freelander, editor of thompson reuters and lakshman achuthan the managing director of the economic cycle research institute. it is not all bad. we'll show you which cities have jobs right now and what those cities are doing right next on "your money." while some fiber ads use super models, metamucil uses super hard working psyllium fiber, which gels to remove unsexy waste and reduce cholesterol. taking psyllium fiber won't make you a model but you should feel a little more super. metamucil. down with cholesterol. your nutritional needs can go up when you're on the road to recovery. proper nutrition can help you get back on your feet. three out of four doctors recommend the ensure brand for extra nutrition. ensure clinical strength has revigor and thirteen grams of protein to protect, preserve, and promote muscle health. and immune balance to help support your immune system. ensure clinical strength... helping you to bounce back. ensure! nutrition in charge! aspercreme breaks the grip, with maximum-strength medicine and no embarrassing odor. break the grip of pain with aspercreme. unemployment stands at 9.1% nationwide. depending where you live the story can be different. let me show you on a map. as of august unemployment in el centro, california, and yuma, arizona was around 30%. las vegas and vero beach around 14%. still well above the national average, rocky mountain, north carolina almost 14%. on the opposite side, take a look at these place, portsmouth, burlington, omaha, nebraska, midland, texas, all under 5%. richard florida senior editor at the atlantic. richard, tell me about these cities that are doing much better than the rest of the country. half the unemployment rate of the national average. what are cities like that doing right or are they doing anything right at all? >> well, ali, as chrystia just said, it is a structural unemployment challenge we face. as the economy transitions from this older industrial economy to this newer more knowledge driven, also resource driven. what you see is that structural transformation chrystia and ken talked about imprinted on america's geography. places that are way out on the coast that had economies in the sunbelt built up on the housing boom and credit bubble, las vegas, riverside, california, even places in arizona like yuma over 30% and those old manufacturing centers like detroit, tragically, 15%, in the city the mayor said it could be as high as 50%. you have this other thing going on where college towns next to detroit like ann arbor have low unemployment, medical centers, education technology, boulder, colorado, down in florida, gainesville as well. the knowledge centers of the country, washington, d.c. performing very well. then what's really striking is the plains, bismarck, fargo, lincoln, omaha, nebraska, oklahoma city, that belt. you have this new geography of america where some places almost don't feel the recession and others have been whacked with long run structural unemployment and no new job creation. >> it's very interesting. like that conversation we had with chrystia and lakshman and ken talking about two economies and people feeling the recession differently, geographically we have two economies as well. richard, hang on a second. christine romans, my colleague and host of cnn's "your bottom line" gallup finds in the midwest and south, 14% more companies are hiring than laying workers off. that is more than anywhere else in the country. but christine, the idea of packing up and moving to a job, to a place that is more prosperous than where you are, is that strategy sensible? you and i have argued about this. i think people should. you're saying maybe sometimes they can't. >> there's two pieces of conflicting advice i can't square here. one, there are places in the country doing so well. opportunities there, ann arbor, north dakota, iowa, some parts of texas. great, go in there, get a job. on the other hand, you know people are hiring people they know. the most important way to get a job right now is networking. if you don't have a network somewhere, how are you going to be the one who is going to break in. if you can square those two pieces of advice, i say, yes, move. if you're not beholden to a house 25% under water and you can move. you know the schools are good where you want to go, fine, move. but remember we know that the way to get a job in this economy is knowing someone who knows you or knows someone who knows you helping you get in a place a good fit for you and the company. >> back to politics. richard, many of the states with the slowest recoveries and highest unemployment are swing states that could decide the election. clearly the president has motivation to dramatically improve the unemployment situation in places like that. but as we just heard in our previous conversation, there may be very little that he or any politician can actually do. although, we will for the next year hear about the fact if you vote to so-and-so they are going to improve the economic job situation in the geography. >> i don't think the president can do much. this is what washington, both sides of the aisle have to understand. as you heard from chrystia and ken and everyone, it's a structural challenge. this isn't just we're going to stimulate the economy and bring back jobs back. how are you going to stimulate a construction sec