Remembering why things are so bad

It’s been two and a half years since the official end of the Great Recession, but over 13 million people remain unemployed—more than 40 percent of them for over six months—and when you add in the underemployed, the number reaches nearly 24 million.

Charts like Figure A, below, have become pretty famous by comparing how long it takes job loss in recent recessions to be recouped (in this case the recessions that began in 1981, 1990, 2001, and the Great Recession). It’s effective in showing just how devastatingly large the gap in the labor market remains by historical standards. Four years since the start of the Great Recession, in December 2007, the labor market still has a far larger jobs deficit as a share of prerecession employment than at any point during even the very deep recession of the early 1980s.

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