Issues in Labor Statistics: Sizing Up the 2007-09 Recession: Comparing Two Key Labor Market Indicators With Earlier Downturns, Summary 10-11

摘要

The job market weakened dramatically during the recent recession. Two of the most commonly used gauges of labor market performance are the unemployment rate (the proportion of the labor force that is unemployed) and the employment-population ratio (the proportion of the civilian noninstitutional population that is employed). Graphically comparing the changes in these measures across past downturns highlights the severity of the recent recession in the labor market. The unemployment rate increased more sharply and the employment-population ratio decreased more precipitously during the 2007-09 recession than in any of the other post WWII recessions. In the first 17 months after the cyclical trough in June 2009, both measures have been relatively slow to recover. The deep recessions that occurred in the early 1980s and the mid-1970s may provide better periods for comparison with the recent recession in terms of length and magnitude than the relatively mild recessions of 2001 and 199091; however, the latter two recessions may provide better insights into the nature of recent post-recession recoveries.