(PTI): The Dow Jones industrial average, one of the key barometers of the financial world, has passed 10,000 points for the first time since October 2008.

The positive development in one of the major US stock indexes means that the US market has apparently left the crisis created by the collapse of Lehman Brothers last year.

US economists believe that the world’s largest economy is still struggling to emerge from its worst recession in decades, with unemployment at around 10 percent. In addition, some fear that rising unemployment will not let a considerable recovery take place.

The Dow has recovered about 3,450 points since bottoming out in early March, but it is still some 4,000 points off its record high in October 2007.

A US private sector group suggested earlier in the week that the country’s recession has ended, but the pace of recovery will be slow due to the high rate of unemployment.

According to a survey of 44 professional forecasters released by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE), more than 80 percent of economists surveyed believed that an expansion of the US economy has begun again after two years of decline.

“The great recession is over,” NABE President-Elect Lynn Reaser said in a statement.

“The vast majority of business economists believe that the recession has ended, but that the economic recovery is likely to be more moderate than those typically experienced following steep declines,” he said.