There has been an abundance of column inches
devoted to the weak job recovery following the Great Recession. Analysts from the left
and right have
offered opinions about why employment didn’t spring back after the
official end of the downturn in July of 2009.
But what many
have missed is that this phenomenon isn’t new. In the three most recent economic downturns the US job
market has been noticeably less fluid than in earlier times. Unemployment – after the recessions of
1990, 2001, and 2007 – was slow to rebound, and in all three cases
continued to increase even after the end of the economic contraction.
This is in stark contrast to our earlier postwar recessions
as illustrated clearly in the graph at the top.
In those instances joblessness fell as soon as the economy began
to grow.