Just in case you were feeling hopeful about our nation’s recovering workforce, those Pulitzer-winning buzzkills at ProPublica had to go and compile a whole host of facts and figures that could turn your upside-down frown back into a regular frown.

Among some of the numbers ProPublica lists:

• Total jobs lost since January 2008: 8.7 million
• Total jobs recovered since January 2008: 1.8 million
• Jobs the U.S. needs to create to 5 percent unemployment rate: 6.8 million, as of January 2011
• Years it will take to get back to an unemployment rate of 5 percent: four years if we’re adding jobs at 350,000 per month; 11 years if we’re adding jobs at the 2005 rate of 210,000 per month
• Unemployed workers per job opening: 4.98
• Pace at which jobs were added throughout the late 1990s: 350,00 per month; Jobs that were added in June: 18,000
• The last time the labor force participation rate was lower than it is now: 1984
• Number of long-term unemployed people in June 2011: 6.3 million, or 44.4 percent of the unemployed
• Recession technically ended: over two years ago, in June 2009

Check out the entire uplifting list over at ProPublica.com

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