How the Recession is Shaping Up

Filed in archive Trends on February 12, 2009

A few days ago I looked at job losses in this recession and talked about the difficult task of predicting sales. I used a chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed real job losses in the 1990, 2001 and current recessions. I thought I'd create a little more context with this new chart.

The new chart from the BLS compares the percentage of jobs lost over six different recessions dating back to 1974. The current recession beats the 1990 and the 2001 recessions in the category as well as in the real number category. We lost about 2% of our jobs in the 2001 recession. We lost less than that (about 1.5%) in the 1990 recession. So far we've lost over 2.5% of our jobs in this recession.

The chart has two interesting pieces of information tucked away in it , though, that you don't see unless you layer the earlier recessions onto it. The first is that, in terms of percentages, we lost the most jobs in the 1981 recession - over 3%. So we're not there yet.

The second tidbit is that in the 1974 recession we lost about the same percentage of jobs as we have now in this recession, and it was at this point that the upturn started. And in less than a year we'd gained those jobs back.

So it's possible... And as Donald Luskin pointed out a while back, this is not the Great Depression - at least not yet.