Recessions were never fun, but we used to bounce back from them fairly quickly. The phrase "bounce back" actually applied. They were more like injuries in our youth: we could "walk them off." Healing was natural, speedy, and expected. But now it seems like every minor injury sends us to the hospital; we take months to recover, and the doctors say we might not ever be the same. Did we just get old, or did something more specific happen? I recently wrote of the graph below. Recessions as measured by the number of private-sector jobs have been generally "V"-shaped: jobs returned about as quickly as they were lost. I noted that in our current recovery, the "V" became very lopsided and that this was the slowest such recovery in our history. Data source: St. Louis Fed/FRED, USPRIV series. But let's separate those recessions: those through 1983 and those since 1990. Do you see a rather stark difference? Both charts are on the same scale, but the recessions on the left....
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