via curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com
Justin Fox says:
I've updated my wildly popular chart of the decline in payroll employment with the nasty new numbers that the Bureau of Labor Statistics released this morning. TIME.com graphics czar Feilding Cage is out, so I made the chart myself, which explains why it's uglier than usual.... What I get from the chart—apart from the realization that I have no future in graphic design—is that job losses from this recession are now worse than in 1981-1982, which is generally considered to have been the most severe economic downturn in the U.S. since the Great Depression. Barring a more or less unimaginable turnaround in the month or two, they will be much worse. Just look at how steep that brown line is! The employment decline was even bigger (in percentage terms) in 1957-1958—and I hope William Polley will put a chart up later with all the postwar recessions so we can see. But that chart will be a lot harder to read, and I just don't think the 1957-1958 downturn, a sharp but pretty brief recession caused by a Federal Reserve crackdown on inflation, is really relevant to our current situation. That was a bunch of auto and steelworkers getting laid off temporarily. This is something else entirely...
Posted via web from http://braddelong.posterous.com/justin-fox-employment-decline at Brad DeLong's Scrapbook
