( CNN ) -- Friday 's weak jobs report is more than a disappointing blip . It is a glimpse ahead of our disappointing future . Nearly three years from the beginning of the economic recovery in the summer of 2009 , the U.S. economy has replaced not even half the jobs lost in the slump of 2007-2009 . At the current pace of job creation , it will take until 2017 to replace all the jobs lost . But of course the population has grown since 2007 , so `` replacement '' is not good enough . We are even further away from equaling the employment rate of 2007 -- the proportion of the working-age population at work . Even when ( or if ) full job recovery does come , it will not restore the economy of 2007 just as it was . Recessions reshape economies . The best book written about the social effects of the Great Recession is Don Peck 's `` Pinched . '' Peck shows us a new world emerging from the catastrophe of 2008 , a new world that most Americans will find harsher than the old . For example : Despite the long , slow relative decline of manufacturing as a source of American jobs , the total number of manufacturing jobs in the United States had remained constant at about 18 million for decades . Between 2007 and 2009 , the number of manufacturing jobs dropped by 6 million . While manufacturing is beginning a recovery now , it seems impossible that the sector will regenerate to anything like its former extent . The new jobs being added to the U.S. economy pay less , on average , than the jobs lost -- which is why the average rate of pay in the United States remains stagnant or even drops as the number of jobs slowly grows . At the top of the economic heap , recovery has been more complete . The richest Americans suffered sharp shocks to their wealth when markets collapsed in 2008-2009 . As financial markets have revived , so has the wealth of the top 1 % ( households earning more than $ 380,000 per year . ) The top 5 % have done OK , too . ( The top 5 % begins a little south of $ 200,000 in household income . ) For most of the country , however , the outlook is -- to borrow Peck 's title -- `` pinched . '' Young people who come of age in the crisis will earn less through their lives than those who came of age during happier times . Marriages break up . Babies are not born . A sense of unfairness spreads through the society . Politics becomes angrier and more paranoid -- for those who take part -- while many others drop out of public life entirely , disregarded and alienated . The country 's political class tends to discuss these hard economic and cultural facts as if they were interesting only in relation to the presidential race , as if the only questions that mattered about economics were : `` Good for Obama ? '' `` Bad for Obama ? '' For most of the country , however , Barack Obama is a flickering electronic image , an only intermittently interesting distraction from the realities of life : stagnant pay , unattractive job options , darkening retirement prospects for the middle-aged and narrowing opportunities for the young . What would it take to do better ? The answer , ironically , will be nearly equally difficult ( but in very different ways ) for politicians of either party . To do better , we 'll need a program to stimulate employment for the long-term unemployed -- including potentially a New Deal-style requirement that nobody receive benefits without working . It 's no good to anybody -- the unemployed least of all -- to allow the unemployed to collect two years ' worth of benefits while waiting at home , their skills atrophying , their resumes going stale . To do better , we may need to induce employers to create jobs , not only through tax cuts but through direct subsidies , including subsidies of the cost of health coverage . ( Especially for older workers , health costs can be more of a deterrent to hiring even than the cost of wages . ) We will need to curtail the generosity of Medicare to open fiscal room for government programs to support opportunities for the young . We will need a permissive monetary policy that accepts moderate inflation to reduce the burden of mortgages and other debts -- even if it bites a little into savings and fixed incomes . We 'll need above all to recognize the magnitude of the social distress we still face , even as the economic statistics tell us of a recovery that moves financial markets and presidential polls -- but that threatens to bypass tens of millions of Americans for months and years . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of David Frum .
David Frum : Friday 's weak jobs report is a sign of America 's economic future . Frum says we are many years away from regaining all jobs lost in the recession . Most Americans are seeing their economic future changed for the worse , he says . Frum : Politicians in both parties will find it hard to adopt policies to reinvigorate economy .