With a decade of falling unemployment behind us, memories fade as to what actually happens during recessions. Those who have been working for a decade or less have never experienced a recession. It hurts. Forty years later, I can still remember being fired at age 22 from a summer job in a copper smelter when the demand for copper turned down. It was not a serious blow economically, but I can recall every detail. While there …showed first 75 words of 1020 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1020 total…remember that what led to your being unemployed, and what makes re-employment difficult, is not your personal performance, but the characteristics of the system. The failures, to the extent that there are failures, lie in the system and not in you. I know. I've been there. Lester C. Thurow, a professor of economics and former dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributor