The business cycle has more pain in store, even as unemployment grows

As my colleague Douglas McIntyre described in "Unemployment problems are worse than meet the eye," unemployment in this recession is different -- what many are calling structural unemployment, meaning a decline in the jobs base, which is not going to bounce back quickly due to deep structural problems in the U.S. economy.

Having been unemployed in the last three major recessions -- 1974, 1981 and 1991 -- I have experienced the gamut of wrenching emotions first-hand and know how those running low on money and hope feel.

The deepest downturns since the Great Depression, the 1974-75 and 1981-83 recessions caused widespread unemployment and misery. In the '70s, the problem was stagflation, a combination of tepid growth and rising inflation which eventually required a direct frontal attack on inflation by President Reagan and Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker, who jacked up interest rates to 16 percent. This tightening of credit slayed the inflation monster but at the cost of millions of jobs.