The growing case for a job-loss "recovery"

[Beet]

Underneath the usual total unemployment numbers are the reasons an individual is unemployed: You are on temporary layoff; you quit your job; you have reentered the labor market and have yet to find a job; or you are entering the job market for the first time and have yet to find a job. Or, finally, you have been permanently separated from your previous employer, who has no expectation of hiring you back.

The last category is the dominant reason for unemployment at this time. That might not seem surprising, but it actually is. Never, in the six recessions preceding the latest one, did permanent separations account for more than 45 percent of the unemployed. The current percentage stands at 56 percent as of September and appears to be still climbing:

[Beet]

My case (or rather, the data's case) is for a job-loss "recovery", a nominal GDP recovery where we continue to lose jobs. Your pointing out that the previous six recessions were milder than the current recession doesn't help you refute that point. It only magnifies the point. The 2001-2003 recovery, for example, was a job-loss recovery, the first real postwar job-loss recovery. And that followed a very mild recession. If the 2001 recession can be followed by a job-loss recovery, why can't the 2009 recession?

Let me just point out that in the 1982 recession, the unemployment rate peaked at 10.8% in November, whereas today the unemployment rate is only 9.8%. But in 1982, the permanent separation rate peaked at under 45%, whereas today it is already 55%. So yes, there is reason for surprise here. If you were expecting a repeat of the 1983 V-shaped recovery, then why would permanent separations be 55% and not 45%?

Finally, I am looking at the absolute fraction of permanent separations, not the fact that it continues to climb (although it does). If it was at 45% and climbing, the case for a job-loss recovery would not be nearly as strong.