When Foreign Policy polled leading economists in the summer of 2011, nearly half were confident the U.S. unemployment rate would fall below 8 percent by the 2012 election; just 20 percent expected the rate would not dip that low. Fifty-five percent said positive U.S. job growth in early 2011 would continue steadily. But here we are, just shy of the presidential election, with unemployment hovering stubbornly above 8 percent* all year. Outside the United States, the eurocrisis rages on despite summit after summit, and China's explosive growth is slowing, much as Beijing may hate to admit it. Now, we've invited more than 60 economists to revisit some of the same questions we asked last year -- and posed some new ones. Will we ever get out of this hole, and what will it take?
Jobs graph: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
Responses to this survey were collected from Aug. 17 to Sept. 14.
