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.
Actually, I don’t need to refute the point, for you haven’t used any valid point to make a case for it yet.
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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?
Probably because you define the last recovery timeline as “2001-2003” and I define it as “2001-Dec2007”. If you’re going to define “recovery” as the INITIAL STAGES of the expansion phase of the business cycle, then I would certainly AGREE that this “recovery” will be job-loss, as is every “recovery” defined under those terms. Which is why employment is accepted as a lagging indicator.
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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.
The change in the “permanent separation” ratio could be caused by many factors including, but not limited to:
1) the pace of contraction
2) the fact that the recovery preceding the 1982 recession only brought unemployment down to ~7.3% and the increase to ~10.8% represented an increase in unemployment rate of only 3.5%, whereas in this recession the increase in unemployment is already >5% and will probably end up being a 6% increase (from ~4.5% to ~10.5%).
3) a change in demographics (e.g. the trend towards two income families).