Chart Of The Day: Recession Edition
Doug Mataconis
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Monday, July 9, 2012
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15 comments
Via Greg Mankiw, a stark portrayal of just how little we’ve recovered from the Great Recession:

About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.
It would look a little less dramatic if the scale went from 0% to 100%, but point taken.
Here, Paul Graham explained this back in 4 BB (before Barack):
I don’t think the employment-population number is the best measure, but we know there are problems out there.
(An 20-50 year-old employment ratio would say more about working age employment. A poverty ratio for 50+ year-olds would say more about retirement conditions.)
@JKB:
I think PT Barnum did a better job, seriously.
@john personna:
If you had perused Graham’s essay, you would have seen he disposes of the idea of money, a means of exchange, as wealth, the creation of something of value for others.
As for employment, I would recommend this exposition: Dear Person Seeking a Job: Why I Can’t Hire You
@rodney dill:
It would also be less dramatic if the time period were bigger. Our absolute peak was just prior to the 2000 recession.
@JKB: Well that’s an interesting essay. The author pulls some numbers out of his posterior and declares that someone could be 36 times more productive working in their own start up company as opposed to being an employee in a corporation. This is partly explained by the fact that the corporation keeps interrupting you when you’re busy thereby preventing you from accomplishing as much as you could otherwise. Silly corporation.
Even if that’s possible in the profession he’s talking about are there any other areas where that might be possible. Could a writer, doctor, painter, whatever be much more productive if not for the shackles of the corporation? In short, what planet does Mr. Graham live on?
Well, the chart shows that the actions Obama took to prevent the onset of another Great Depression actually took hold and worked. We are in an anemic recovery, but we are not now in a recession.
@JKB:
Sorry, for some reason I just read that as advice tor the individual, rather than about “loses” to society.
For me the problem with the “loss” story is that it falls victim to that same old Planet America fallacy. If America were a closed economy, then, etc.
But America is not a closed economy, and the wage tension is far greater. A $1.70 per hour wage in China is going to trump anything you can do here, with our without minimum wage, with or without benefits on top.
People (maybe even you) have tried to tell me that if labor costs were just $8 rather than $10 or whatever, we wouldn’t have outsourcing, but that IMNSHO fails math.
@Scott O:
A highly simplified one.
@JKB: And this has what to do with the topic?
@john personna: “A poverty ratio for 50+ year-olds would say more about retirement conditions.)”
When large numbers of 50-somethings are leaving the labor force, do you really think that it’s because they are choosing to retire?
@JKB: What part of ‘slack demand’ do you not understand?
When unemployment surges during a financial crash, it’s not structural.
@Scott O: “Well that’s an interesting essay. The author pulls some numbers out of his posterior and declares that someone could be 36 times more productive working in their own start up company as opposed to being an employee in a corporation. This is partly explained by the fact that the corporation keeps interrupting you when you’re busy thereby preventing you from accomplishing as much as you could otherwise. Silly corporation. ”
It has a very Dot-Com Era feel to it.
@Barry:
That’s what that kind of number is going to show. Certainly we’ve heard about a wave of unintended retirement, and that is a concern.
I know I’m late to this, but at Calculated Risk, there was a good discussion of the employment population ratio a few months back, http://www.calculatedriskblog.com/2011/12/comments-on-employment-population-ratio.html
Basically, the key demographic is men 25-54, and their participation rate has been in a slight downward trend for decades, and the recession and recovery hasn’t really made a big difference.