Long Great Recession

Unemployment is down to 8.8% - that's good. How does this recession match up with post-war history? It is still the worst. Check out the chart below from the blog Calculated Risk (via the Economist's Free Exchange blog):

Unemployment & Inflation - This time is different, not so much

Paul Krugman has good post on how high unemployment is affecting inflation unemployment in the way the Phillips curve would predict (he also has a good chart comparing this recession to earlier ones in regards to inflation and unemployment). He also notes alarm that the Fed seems to be ignoring this piece of economic theory.

Unemployment Comparisions

How bad is the current employment situation. Krugman posted a set of charts on his blog that give a number of different ways to compare the current unemployment situation to past recessions - decline in employment, rate of unemployment and duration of unemployment. As could be expected, this recession is the worst is all categories. As a point of comparison, the second worst recent recession was in 1980 - with a large decline in employment and high unemployment, but the duration of unemployment was short.

I like these types of charts because the comparisons they make are great for class discussions.