Just How Bad Is This Recession? Look At The Scary, Scary Graph
Nancy Pelosi wants to scare the crap out of you, so her office has released the above scary graph, which we bring to you by way of Time's Swampland blog.
Here's what Pelosi's office has to say about their work. (The graph uses "actual job-loss data," from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.)
This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession — showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.
By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.
Time's readers quickly got to work debunking the graph for not taking into account the difference in population, though it seems that they ultimately concluded that this recession is the worst since 1974-1975, and may likely be even crappier than that.
What do you think? What's that? It's so hard to understand you when you've got your hands shoved in your mouths to stop the screams from escaping.
How Bad Is It? [Time via Buzzfeed]
MORE: How Bad Is It? [Time]
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Comments:
@hals000:
number of jobs lost over time during a "recession" period compared to previous recessions.
The graph shows a tremendous amount of jobs lost over a short period of time as compared to the recessions in 1990 and 2001.
@hals000: Seems to be indexed to "month zero" as the peak, then shows the number (and speed) of job losses for three recessions. HTH
See also:
What good does this chart do? What good do the endless headlines that forcast Doom and Death for the economy do? Does anyone viewing this chart have any power to really change even a small part of any of this? I completely advocate staying informed,(I'm here, aren't I?) but the ridiculous over-coverage of job losses and gigantic headlines of FINANCIAL MELTDOWN!!!!!!!! WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!! is borderline fearmongering.
The green line shows what happens to your libido once starring at Pelosi in the face. That woman frightens me. She has one frozen expression on her face, and it's scary.
How did we ever recover from the other two recessions without a 1 Trillion dollar spending plan? Perhaps debt is not a road to recovery...
The 1990 and 2001 recessions were paultry and insignificant -- minor corrections, and one induced by a national emergency. But, that this is the most serious economic correction since the 1970s, perhaps 1930s, is already pretty well accepted.
All I know is that there are NO advertising jobs in America for folks in their forties and fifties.
My friends in the field have been living on savings since about the year 2000.
No, we haven't been able to make up for lost income selling stuff on ebay...
So it's the worst recession of my life, almost, as I was born in '75.
It could also just be that the severity may not end up following this path, just that job losses were much quicker this time around. There's some part of me that thinks that some companies are using the doom & gloom environment to excuse some layoffs that might have been a long time coming--perhaps thinking that their layoff announcements won't be as damaging if everyone else is doing it, too. Crowd mentality.
@Ash78: So if we were to some how bring about another ice age we would get rid of pirates..
I would like to see a graph that depicts temperature to ninja's please.
@Skankingmike: Interesting thought. The graph appears a little outdated, since it doesn't account for the recent influx of Somali pirates since the year 2000. But your ice age comment is right on, and I think it's proof positive that we need to tackle global warming asap.
@Ash78: I for one think we should invest in giant corks to plug up volcanoes they are horrible at emitting green house gasses.
I'm just afraid their lobbyists are too strong in Washington.
@Skankingmike: Yeah, I expected a graph of 500 million lost jobs a month to look much worse than that.
I'm going to play the "glass if half full" card.
Look at the chart? Notice anything interesting about it? Look really hard. Do you see it?
Jobs. Eventually. Return. To. Normal.
Even better in fact!
So don't panic. Things will be fixed. Give it a few years.
@Ash78: You may be right companies love firing old and over paid people, however I feel that some of these people will end up on the system and never get back into the game the same way they were.
Which leads us to the 10000 pound elephant Obama nor anybody in Washington wants to tackle. Social Security.
Baby boomers HOOOO!
The graph shows that jobs lost during the 2001 recession were not fully recovered until 2005. How much has the population really changed since 2005? I don't think this graph would look much different if it had been adjusted for change in population like the Time's readers wanted.
Time for some stimulus.
@Skankingmike: Are we reading the same graph? Seems to me that as temp rises, pirates decrease (see the y2k dot and how it says 17 pirates at 15.9C?)
In all seriousness though, the article's graph would be much better if it also included a graph that showed percent jobs lost rather than actual number. Total losses is all well and everything, but if the population of eligable workers say trippled (exagerating) compared to the last recession, well, it makes a difference.
I will admit that does look quite sharp regardless of how many more people there are in the workforce.
This is why most serious economists, when talking about job loss statistics, refer to everything in percentages. So there isn't the discrepancy between the differences in workforce population across various years.
@Skankingmike: @Ash78: is it just me, or does the number of pirates increase as temperatures decrease?
I think its interesting that the savings rate has jumped through the roof. Clearly a paradigm shift. Once we have all figured out how to create jobs not associated with buying cheap plastic crap from WalMart, the economy will turn around.
@Segador: It's fearmongering so the government can push their "Spendulus" onto us with all their pet projects and pork attached.
I hate government. I'm glad Mr. Change is out there showing his true colors by stumping in support of this farce that has little to do with job creation.
@Kogenta: yea graphs go up and numbers go down!
but see ash78's comment on how it doesn't show the true Somalian pirates or even Singapore's.
@Ash78: I think you're right on. Also, in the glass house of today's market, companies that don't make layoffs and other cuts wind up being punished by shareholders who don't believe their company is "doing enough" to withstand the recession.
Best Buy is a good example...they made a ton of corporate layoffs despite their No. 2 competitor biting the dust.
Oh, my God! The only solution is to throw a trillion dollars at campaign contributors! Do it now!
I just tend to ignore anything my senator NaziPelosi says. She is a moron.
@FreeShaggy: The problem is that many in the public are screaming "FIX IT!!! FIX IT NAO!!1!!" at our elected officials, when the best thing would probably be to leave it the heck alone.
@boomersix: Yeah, this is well beyond "borderline." This is Grade-A fearmongering and sensationalism.
@provolone: Barack, is that you?
The recovery after 9/11 was incredibly quick, because in reality nothing happened to affect the nation's economy. Everybody sold off their stocks because they thought the end was near, and as a result, companies fired a bunch of people. The stock market only took about a year to recover, if I recall correctly. It was a different kind of recession - one caused by disaster, not one caused by economic problems.
@Segador: I thought I was going to take a lot of heat formy comment. It's nice to see that quite a few people feel the same way.
@Landru: It's pretty easy to argue the going an additional trillion dollars into debt ain't going to help either.
This stimulus plan sucks. There's probably a way to make it more effective, but the amount of pork and BS projects attached to it are an embarrassing indictment on our elected officials.
That graph is extremely mis-leading. The Y-axis shows job losses in numbers. The economy and work force of America has grown substantially since 1990 and 2001. Thus, a similar percentage of job losses will be a larger net total. It should be in percentages. In fact, this graph shows good news. If you want to compare this recession to previous ones, it seems like we're just as far into it as past recessions were when they began to recover.
Everyone needs to take a deep breath and start thinking logically again...
@InfiniTrent: Agreed...the only industry that I remember really struggling pre-9/11 was the airlines (who then used 9/11 as a convenient scapegoat for their multi-year problems). Everything else just seemed like a knee-jerk and general stock market sell-off, as you said.
@buckfutt: ATV Trails! Amtrak funding! Reopen a clean coal plant that was shut down for being a wasteful project! Contraception education!
Yeah...this is important stuff! I'm onboard!
@InfiniTrent: SO if it sucks, and all educated people seem to think it sucks, and my friend with his Master's in Economic Theory thinks it sucks, then why the hell is this passing? Who elected these idiots? Oh, wait...
@InfiniTrent: Except, of course, if the reason the previous recession/depressions got fixed is because the government fixed it.
@MichaelBrazell: 2001 wasn't exactly shaping up to be a great year before September. Remember the Dot Com meltdowns? That was already happening before anyone took over a plane.
@Segador: And of course, it's a vicious cycle. As the media continues to hype it, more small business owners get frightened and lay people off, continuing the cycle.
@InfiniTrent: I find your 50s is a perfect time for a career change. Would you like fries with that?
@jwissick: Seeing as you incorrectly identified House Speaker Nancy Pelosi as a senator, I'd say the moron in the room might be you...
Just sayin'.
@jwissick: Calling the Speaker of the House a "senator" doesn't do much to increase your reputation.
This chart has a little too much drama attached to it. and doesn't consider other variables.. I follow another blog about the economy and they put the current cut back in jobs into perspective including a much less "dramatic" chart.
the link is here:
[feeds.feedburner.com]
@RandomHookup: Yeah but they where insignificant, especially since .coms by their nature really didnt HAVE any people.
@InfiniTrent:Yes, casue the last thing we want to do is reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and STD infections. I'm sure that won't help the economy at all.
Ok, is anyone else confused as to what this graph illustrates? Or am I just stupid?