She said it would take an annualized growth rate of 2 to 2.5 percent before the jobless rate went down.

"Even though people are chomping at the bit and wanting to see evidence [of job growth], we are still very much early in the process," Romer said.

Hurt early

Economists now say the recession began in December 2007. That puts Donahue in the first wave of people who got hurt.

Since high school he had been around boats. He made boats. He sold boats. He was a captain on the Chesapeake Bay and in Florida.

He was earning $10 an hour, plus tips, as a mate in Fort Lauderdale when he got laid off in March of last year.

Unable to meet his $800 monthly rent, he returned home to Jersey. He now lives with his mother, doing chores and looking for work while collecting jobless benefits.

"The yard has been cut more times than I've ever cut a yard in my life," he said.

He has sought work in boating, but that industry has collapsed. He has looked for a job as a prep cook and as a landscaper.

Shaved bald, he said: "I'm at the age where I have enough experience, but I'm too old to get hired anymore."

He has spent a lot of time on his mother's deck, reading the papers, with his dog, Bo.

He followed the news Feb. 17 as President Obama signed the stimulus into law and said of the economic crisis: "Today does mark the beginning of the end: the beginning of what we need to do to create jobs for Americans scrambling in the wake of layoffs."

He read that New Jersey would get $17.5 billion in tax relief and spending. Based on a formula, the White House said the stimulus would foster 100,000 jobs in the state.

He kept up with the news last month as ground was broken on the first part of $652 million in road work that New Jersey will get. That's what got him calling government offices.

He was led to the state's stimulus Web site, nj.gov/recovery. He saw no jobs there. But on a Transportation Department site he found names of firms that had won highway contracts.

When he got the owner of one company on the phone, the owner asked him, "Are you in the union?"

"No," he said.

Donahue figured he couldn't catch a break.

"They said they were only hiring union workers."

"Too early to tell"