From House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's blog:
This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession – showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.
By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.
Paul,
ReplyDeleteIt would be interesting to normalize the figures to /per capita or /total workforce.
US population in 1990 was 250mil, 2000 was 280mil, 2009 something like 306mil.
Just trying not to be too depressed!
Tim
The raw numbers are scary, but somewhat deceiving. There was an increase in the workforce of roughly 8 million between the last recession and the current one. A more accurate chart would trace emplyoyment percentage.
ReplyDeleteI haven't had time to read it yet, but apparently this January Congressional Budget Office report (pdf) predicts that the recession will end the middle of this year, with employment rates better than the recession of '81-82.
ReplyDelete