The long road to recovery in the U.S.

It's June 2014, and that means it's been five years since the Great Recession officially ended in the United States. If you do not feel in the mood to celebrate this milestone, you're not alone.

Most Americans still rate the economic situation as "bad" and for good reason: The job recovery is the slowest in history, wages have barely risen, house prices are still below their peak and More Americans than ever are using food stamps.

The ordinary people do not feel the recovery because, frankly, has not reached to them.

So how long will the healing process? Economists surveyed by CNNMoney expect a full recovery is still two or three years away.

"The labor market is the scar of the economy that has persisted since the Great Recession, the financial and real estate crisis. May be disappearing, but it is still clearly visible and will remain so in the coming years, "notes Sean Snaith, an economics professor at the University of Central Florida.

This is what America has come: Technically, the Great Recession ended in June 2009 This was determined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, an independent group responsible for officially set the beginning and end of economic cycles from economists. 1920s.

Why choose that date? In essence, then, 2009 was when the bleeding stopped and began the slow process of healing. After that point, the economy began to rebound. Auto sales began to rise, and the slowdown in the manufacturing sector ended. The housing prices bottomed out and eventually began to climb again, and the stock market came back to life.

Today, five years later, the economy and the stock market in the United States are at historic highs. States such as North Dakota and Texas are benefiting from energy-related boom. Jobs in the health sector continue to grow, and are also regaining professional positions in offices. There are also more low-wage jobs in restaurants and bars.

But the recovery is far from advancing at a rapid pace. Was rather a long, slow march, and this is the key component is missing: The labor market in general.

Why is the country has not fully recovered? Overall, the U.S. economy lost 8.7 million jobs in the recession, half of whom were from blue collar industries like construction and manufacturing. As the housing market collapsed, the states of the Sun Belt region as Nevada, Florida and Arizona suffered the loss of jobs sharper, and today, the labor markets in these states are below their pre-recession peak.

The recovery itself is occurring, but is too slow for many Americans. The economy has not recovered all the jobs lost during the crisis, let alone created new enough to keep pace with a growing population. As of April, about 3.5 million people had been unemployed for six months or more. (That's more than the population of Chicago.)

One of the clearest signs of recovery is the booming stock market, but only half of Americans own shares, either directly or through a retirement account, and for many, the amount is small. Actually, they are the richest households who have benefited from the bull market of five years.

Households earning $ 394.000 or more in 2012 (the richest 1%) accounted for nearly 95% of the income gains in the first three years of recovery, according to economists at the forefront of research on inequality income, Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. Meanwhile, the income of the remaining 99% remained virtually stagnant.

The housing prices have not recovered yet: For the middle class, the majority of its assets is tied to the value of your home, and the prices of residential real estate have not returned to its peak.

"No wonder that many people feel that the economy is not in good shape," warns James Smith, chief economist at Parsec Financial. "Their incomes are lower than in 2007 or the value of your home is much lower then."

Every American - including children - is worse ($ 4.700 less per year) than it would be if the economy had not entered recession, calculated Lawrence Yun, chief economist of the National Association of Realtors. Of course some are better and others worse, but that's the average loss.

"The gap is still large," Yun holds. "After a recession, as a rule to offset the decline, the economy must grow at 4% to 5% per year." Instead, the economy has grown at a rate of about 2% annually.

Prospects for 2014 are optimistic, many economists predict that the U.S. economy will grow more than 3% this year. That said, even at that rate, a full recovery will take several years.