09 February 2009

Don't panic, but ...

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Pelosi's comparison to the two prior, relatively mild recessions seems rather myopic. See http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/02/09/comparing-this-recession-to-the-last-five/ and
http://www.williampolley.com/blog/archives/2009/02/employment-loss.html for a wider range of recessions.

-- Aaron

d a r k c h i l d e said...

Holy pancakes Econonyman! That's one heck of a steep decline. I'm also very aware of what is becoming known as "fear management" (also known as guilt & intimidation) in the workplace. This is when the executives/management *make sure* that the worker-bees know that the head-on-the-chopping-block could happen at any time...so work, work, work and hope that it happens to your teammate instead of you!

Jonathan Korman said...

Aaron is right that the current job loss rate is a long way from being unprecedented. Both Pelosi's chart and the more comprehensive ones he links demonstrate clearly that there have been other post-WWII recessions that have shown deeper and even faster job losses than we've seen so far. (And obviously we're still a long way from '30s levels of unemployment.)

These things bottom out pretty suddenly ... but there's no signs that we're there yet. For the moment, this is among many indicators that we're in freefall.

Kate said...

Cheer up, my son............you too could work your entire life and see 1/3 to 1/4 of your retirement go down the tubes in a matter of months...............or NOT...........just to let you know you will have very little inheritance at this rate. Yeah, it's your mom .......... cheery as ever.

Unknown said...

Looking at the other graphs, I noticed something. Now this is VERY unscientific, but it LOOKS like these curves are roughly symmetrical. The 2001 reccession started down slow, continued slow, and recovered just as slow. The rapid plunges seem to have similarly rapid recoveries.

Is this a real phenomenon? What might explain this? If the future bears this out, at least we can hope to look forward to a rapid recovery. (Crosses Fingers)

batojar