From the Peterson Institute of International Economics, the first hints that unemployment will be persistent, brutal, and even at unprecedented post-war levels:

“a greater share of the US economy today is undergoing structural change than has been the case in previous decades. Combined with the record current level of long-term unemployment in the US (29 percent of the total in June 2009 were unemployed for 27weeks or longer, the highest ever recorded by the BLS since records began in 1948⁶), this suggests that the structural level of unemployment in the US has rising rapidly in recent months. Not only could we be back in the 1970s, we may also be going through changes in employment that we have never seen before.”

(http://www.iie.com/realtime/?p=852)

A BILL To prevent the shipment in interstate commerce of certain
articles and commodities, in connection with which persons are employed
more than five days per week or six hours per day, and prescribing
certain conditions with respect to purchases and loans by the United
States, and codes, agreements, and licenses under the National
Industrial Recovery Act.

Whereas interstate commerce among the people of the various States has
been and is now burdened, hampered, and clogged by a patent and
continued idleness of workers as well as the mechanical appliances and
implements of production; and

Whereas this continued idleness of men and machines has necessarily
resulted in imposing the burden of feeding and supporting more than
eighteen million people upon that part of our people who do work and
produce, which condition is unjust to those who work and those who
cannot obtain work; and

Whereas interstate commerce and trade can best be revived, and the
comfort and happiness of the people can best be produced by an economic

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071202081_2.html

[snip]

During the first two months of the administration, White House and
Treasury officials tried to deal with the worsening economy almost
without a break. The image of senior economic adviser Lawrence H.
Summers nodding off during a presidential meeting with credit card
executives became the emblem of that period.

Behind the scenes, it was even worse. The night before Obama announced
the administration's housing plan on Feb. 18 in Arizona, Sperling
e-mailed the final documents at 3 a.m. and asked for comments. Five
people responded immediately.

Martin Moore-Ede, a former Harvard University professor, calls it the
"iron man" syndrome and says the American political workplace is one of
the few that still resists a mechanism for ensuring people get rest.


One study conducted for the British Parliament found that "mental

The latest Zcom Update includes a section on reducing work hours:

http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticlePrint/20982

Relevant excerpt from Michael Albert essay:

What about employment? Demand has already dropped and is dropping further.
To deal with needing to produce less output due to facing reduced demand,
firms fire workers. We don't want that, so we need another law. There will
be no firing until the crisis is passed. None. We don't want firing, so we
outlaw firing. The owners won't like that. Tough. They are the masters of
the old universe, not of the one we want to live in.

But how can owners keep just as many workers, yet produce less output? They
can cut back hours for each worker. That way they keep all their workers
employed but they can also have a total output at whatever level is needed.
But wait - unless we make another rule, cutting back work hours would reduce
overall incomes the same as just some people getting pink slips would. It