“This recession has become the longest and deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression,” EPI director Larry Mishel and co-author Heidi Shierholz wrote, noting that as of May, it was in its 16th month. June makes it 17. “In order to see how this recession stacks up against previous post-war recessions, we compare labor market indicators at the start of recessions to their values 16 months later,” Mishel and Shierholz said. Some key findings:
• Unemployment “increased much more rapidly during this recession than in other post-war recessions. The unemployment rate increased 4 percentage points in the first 16 months of the current recession, a far steeper increase than any of the previous recessions. In particular, during the first 16 months of the deep recession of 1981-1982, the unemployment rate increased only 3.2 percentage points.”
• The number of workers gainfully employed went down in this recession far more than it did in the prior 50 years. “Total non-farm employment...decreased much more during this recession — 4.2% — than in prior recessions. In particular, during the first 15 months of the recession of 1981-1982, employment declined by only 2.9%.” Employment “fell off a cliff” in the last eight months of the current crash.
• “While the labor market shed 5.7 million jobs since the start of this recession, in those 16 months, the population continued to grow. Just to keep up with growth, the economy must add approximately 127,000 jobs every month. Two million jobs should have been added over this period. In other words, the economy is now almost 8 million jobs below what is needed to maintain pre-recession employment levels.”
• “Underemployment is a more comprehensive measure of labor market slack that includes not just the unemployed, but also ‘involuntarily’ part-time workers and marginally attached workers (jobless workers who want a job but are not actively seeking work and are not counted as officially unemployed). Underemployment data are only available since the mid-1990s. But the number of involuntarily part-time workers has nearly doubled since the start of this recession, from 4.6 million to 9 million. The underemployment rate increased from 8.7% to 15.8%, so that now 24.8 million people — one of every six workers — are either unemployed or underemployed.”
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
For more information
Visit the EPI website, www.epi.org
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“This recession has become the longest and deepest economic downturn since the Great Depression,” EPI director Larry Mishel and co-author Heidi Shierholz wrote, noting that as of May, it was in its 16th month. June makes it 17. “In order to see how this recession stacks up against previous post-war recessions, we compare labor market indicators at the start of recessions to their values 16 months later,” Mishel and Shierholz said. Some key findings:
• Unemployment “increased much more rapidly during this recession than in other post-war recessions. The unemployment rate increased 4 percentage points in the first 16 months of the current recession, a far steeper increase than any of the previous recessions. In particular, during the first 16 months of the deep recession of 1981-1982, the unemployment rate increased only 3.2 percentage points.”
• The number of workers gainfully employed went down in this recession far more than it did in the prior 50 years. “Total non-farm employment…decreased much more during this recession — 4.2% — than in prior recessions. In particular, during the first 15 months of the recession of 1981-1982, employment declined by only 2.9%.” Employment “fell off a cliff” in the last eight months of the current crash.
• “While the labor market shed 5.7 million jobs since the start of this recession, in those 16 months, the population continued to grow. Just to keep up with growth, the economy must add approximately 127,000 jobs every month. Two million jobs should have been added over this period. In other words, the economy is now almost 8 million jobs below what is needed to maintain pre-recession employment levels.”
• “Underemployment is a more comprehensive measure of labor market slack that includes not just the unemployed, but also ‘involuntarily’ part-time workers and marginally attached workers (jobless workers who want a job but are not actively seeking work and are not counted as officially unemployed). Underemployment data are only available since the mid-1990s. But the number of involuntarily part-time workers has nearly doubled since the start of this recession, from 4.6 million to 9 million. The underemployment rate increased from 8.7% to 15.8%, so that now 24.8 million people — one of every six workers — are either unemployed or underemployed.”
This article was written by Press Associates, Inc., news service. Used by permission.
For more information
Visit the EPI website, www.epi.org