That graph is mistitled isn’t it?
I see “clusterstock”. Shouldn’t it be “clusterf...”?
Article from the Ticker Guy, Denninger, posted just a bit earlier.
“Non-Farm Payrolls 6/4: OUCH”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2527712/posts
Are you sure thats not a wiring diagram for a Gibson Les Paul?
And the Stimulus has worked ......... SARC..............
I wonder where the curve for the Great Depression would fit on that graph.
No, wait - the red one is a pretty good match.
Small sample size.
There were recessions in the 1800’s which clearly had large employment losses just like this one. 1873 and 1896 both come to mind. The panic of 1907 was probably pretty bad too, and 1920 was definitely bad. The 1944-1946 recession saw a drop in employment of over 10%, a GDP drop of over 10%, and a drop in industrial production of over 33%. The arbitrary looking at only post-WWII recessions simply limits the opportunities to find comparable economic circumstances.
Also, breaking the 1979-1982 recession in two makes the employment losses then look better than they were. Unemployment troughed at 5.6% in 1979 and peaked at 10.8% in 1982. In the current recession we’ve gone from 4.4% to 10.2%.
The 1973-75 recession and the 1979-82 recession were very bad because of the wrenching industrial transformation they created, but not for employment in aggregate numbers because the enormous supply of baby boomer job entrants created its own demand through the base-economic consumption of adults for food, clothing, transportation, and housing.
Employment growth has been anemic since 2000 because (a) the employment entrants are the baby-busters of the 1970’s and early 1980’s, and (b) the number of baby-boomer retirees has been accelerating ever since the leading edge of them hit 55 years old (government retirement age) in 2000, and (c) technological progress from computing is eliminating entire sectors of the workforce like engineering draftsmen and secretaries. Without taking into account those circumstances, its difficult to directly compare the numbers of employed persons since 2000 with previous eras.
1989-2003 was a period of high relative fertility. This wedge of new young people is about to enter the workforce over the next decade and will be accompanied by young adult hyper consumption. It will create its own economic boomlet.
This shows recessions since 1948 and yet everyone has acknowledged the current recession is the worst since WWII... Personally, I would be surprised if the chart didn’t look like this!
Don’t get me wrong, although our economy is self-correcting... a meddlesome government can cause a capsize. I’m still very concerned about our future.
