The recession has been effectively a depression for US blue-collar workers, who are losing jobs far more quickly than the nation as a whole, according to a new report by Northeastern University’s Center for Labor Market Studies.

The study estimated that the nation’s blue-collar industries have cut one in six jobs since 2007, compared with about one in 20 for all industries, resulting in very large numbers competing for rare jobs in construction or manufacturing, with many unlikely to find work in those sectors again.

Andrew Sum, the center’s director and principal author of the study, said the rate of job losses suffered by blue-collar workers matches the fall in overall employment during the Great Depression, when the nation as a whole lost about one in six jobs.

“These guys used to be the backbone of our working middle class,’’Sum said. “The really scary thing is they have no jobs to come back to.’’

In Massachusetts, location of the university, there are 65 unemployed construction and 24 jobless manufacturing workers for each available position, according to the study while in professional occupations, just two job seekers are chasing each job.

The researchers calculated the ratio of the estimated number of unemployed persons in the nation to the number of job vacancies in the non-farm sector from the beginning of the recession through September 2009, the most recent month for which vacancy data is available.

In November-December 2007, there were 186 unemployed persons in the US for every 100 available job vacancies, or nearly 2 unemployed workers for every job vacancy.

By December 2008, there were 441 unemployed for every 100 job vacancies and this ratio rose further to 581 in September 2009, an all time high over the past 10 years for which data is available. These findings indicate that there were nearly six unemployed persons for every available job opening in September 2009, representing a massive labour surplus. The number of unutilized and underutilized workers in September 2009 was more than 30 million, exceeding the number of available job openings by more than 12 to 1.

In durable goods manufacturing, there were 17 unemployed persons for every job opening and nearly 25 unemployed for every job opening in construction.

Up to 70 per cent of unemployed blue-collar workers have lost jobs permanently, meaning their old jobs won’t be there when the economy recovers, according to the study. Hundreds of thousands have given up looking for work and dropped out of the labour force.

Last month, General Electric's CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, said in a speech to cadets at West Point Military Academy: "I have taken on the challenge to increase manufacturing jobs in the United States. These are the jobs that have created the midwestern middle class for generations. Manufacturing jobs paid for college educations, including mine. They have been cut in half over the past two decades."

This month, economists at US investment bank Morgan Stanley, said the great US employment recession is finally ending. The jury is still out on the thesis that employers went overboard in slashing payrolls and will start to hire back. At first glance, December's decline of 85,000 in non-farm payrolls seems to refute that notion, but they believe that weather-related headwinds played a significant role in the result.  More important, several signs point to positive job growth very soon. They expect job gains over this year of just over 1% (130,000 monthly), along with a consistent rise in the workweek and see aggressive cuts to payrolls over the past two years setting the stage for a solid rebound, despite only moderate economic growth.