Fear Of Major Layoffs Drops To Lowest Level Since '08, Survey Finds

The financial crisis officially began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers in Sept., 2008. Five years later and the economy is down a net total of 240,000 jobs, at latest count, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That figure hardly qualifies as a wash; over the last half-decade the American economy "should have been adding [jobs], instead of trying to recoup the jobs that have been lost," as Heidi Shierholz, an economist with the liberal and non-profit Washington D.C.-based Economic Policy Institute, recently told AOL Jobs.