The economy needs to add about 150,000 jobs a month just to keep up with normal population growth. The protracted stretch of weak-to-moderate job creation over the last two years has left many of the people who lost jobs during the recession increasingly desperate. There are now 14.1 million unemployed, with 6.3 million of them having searched for work for six months or longer. Including those who are working part time because they cannot find full-time work and those who have stopped looking, the broader unemployment rate is now 16.2 percent, its highest level since December 2010.