Unemployment could stay high across the United States for years to come, a leading economist has warned.

Despite a series of recent initiatives aimed at getting people back into work in a variety of sectors, Janet Yellen, the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, told AFP that the slow rate of growth being seen in the US economic recovery overall is likely to be reflected in the jobs market over the short-to-medium-term future.

Indeed, speaking on the back of the release of the latest economic figures from the US government, Ms Yellen warned that the next few years could see a repeat of the situation immediately following the downturn of the early 1990s and then again in the aftermath of 2001, when the jobs market took longer to pick up than other parts of the economy.

"In both cases, output growth was less robust than in the typical recovery and, unfortunately, things seem to be shaping up similarly this time around," she said in an interview with the news provider.

This pessimistic outlook is also shared by World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who warned this week that unemployment levels will remain high in the US well into 2010.