While health care and some energy-related jobs have boomed throughout in recent years, the other winners have mostly been in skilled (professions) like computer systems design, management consulting and accounting, where employers have added back as many or more jobs than were cut during the (downturn).

Companies like Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, which offer accounting and other business advisory services, as well as management (consulting) firms like Bain & Company, have returned to peak hiring levels. Many Silicon Valley firms are aggressively recruiting. Google, for example, (announced) that it has hired more people in 2011 than in any previous year.

Other employers are adding back jobs that were cut, though not yet enough to reach prerecession peaks. What is more, these jobs are in areas like (retail), hospitality and home health care, categories that pay low (wages) and are unlikely to give workers much economic security.

The sectors that have been slowest to recover are those that endured the most acute job losses, like construction and state and local government. Construction workers are among the biggest sufferers, stung by a (housing) collapse that led to the loss of two million jobs. Since the recovery began, the (industry) has added just 47,000 jobs.

Even manufacturing, which has shown a relatively healthy pace of job creation during the recovery, has (added) just over a tenth of the 2.3 million jobs that disappeared in the downturn.