The nation’s economy continues to recover — but not for everyone.

The United States continues to work its way out of the Great Recession. Stock market averages are at or near their record highs of 2008. Housing and manufacturing are rebounding. People are spending money again, and President Obama has declared that “an economic recovery has begun.”

Despite the good news, however, thus far the economic upturn has been anemic at best. The U.S. economy is producing far below its capacity. Nowhere is this felt more keenly than in the ranks of the unemployed.

Mortimer Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News & World Report, points out that since World War II, it has typically taken no more than two years to recover all jobs lost in a recession. Today, five years after employment’s previous high, we are still down 3.2 million jobs.

At the current rate, he says, it will be seven years before the jobs lost in the Great Recession are restored.

One reason is the economic excesses that were built up during the 1990s. People and businesses borrowed and built as if the sky was the limit. When reality came, as it always does, the fall was very, very hard.

A more important reason is that while the federal government was effective in preventing a catastrophic financial meltdown in 2008, it has been remarkably ineffective in creating policies that encourage economic recovery.

Indeed, despite trillions of dollars spent on stimulus programs, many argue that government policies actually are hindering recovery, rather than helping it.

Instead of streamlining regulations to promote business activity and job creation, the government has been creating new regulations at a record pace. Environmental permits, new safety regulations, new health rules and other federal requirements are causing bottlenecks for business expansion. They may be promoted as beneficial for the public, but they are resulting in fewer full time jobs and wage stagnation.

The way to prosperity is private business expansion, not government expansion. The United States became the economic engine of the world because it followed this formula. It is time we focused on it again.

— The Grand Island (Neb.) Independent