Number One in Joblessness in Modern Recessions

- It is the worst of times, period. -

By Pau Krugman

I’ve seen a peculiar meme surfacing here and there lately — the assertion that people like me are exaggerating how bad our current difficulties are, that things were actually worse in the 70s and 80s. I wonder where that’s coming from — and I really do; it has the feel of one of those things being disseminated on talk radio or something, and I think I hear a faint chant of Jimmy Carter! Jimmy Carter! in the background.

Whatever. The truth is that this really is the big one. Catherine Rampell recently updated the recession comparison chart, showing declines in employment. Here’s the percentage decline in employment in recessions since 1970:

We’re really number one, by that standard.

But wasn’t the unemployment rate higher in the past? Well, in 1982, although not in the 1970s, it was briefly a bit higher than the peak this cycle:

But back then the “full employment” level of unemployment was higher, so the increase wasn’t as large; more important, most of the unemployment was short-term, nothing like the deeply corrosive long-term unemployment we’re facing now:

So these really are the worst of times.

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