The Illiad and Odyssey

''Unemployment is the Achilles heel of this recovery,'' said Sung Won Sohn, an economist at California State University. ''I will be surprised if the jobless rate falls below 9 percent this year, and it will take four or five years for it to get back to the levels before the recession hit.'' 

Achilles' heel killed the Greek's champion warrior. Unfortunately, the phrase has come to mean a soft spot, not a lethal vulnerability. Most economists do not include an unemployment component to their definition of "recession." People out of work are merely the by product of economic downturns. It is just a weak spot.

Like the Homer's sequel to the epic war poem, the return to "normal" might mean a long odyssey for people out of work.