In the old days — before 1990 — American recessions tended to be fairly sharp. But the recoveries, when they came, were also rapid. Laid-off workers were recalled and consumers who had deferred purchases out of fear they might lose their jobs were willing again to buy cars and homes.
The newer version of recessions — in 1990-91 and 2001 — provided shallower downturns. But the aftermath was also slow and painful. They came to be known as jobless recoveries.
The National Bureau of Economic Research determined this week that the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009. That made it the longest downturn since World War II, and data had already shown it was the deepest in terms of decline in gross domestic product.
And now that we know the recovery is more than a year old, it appears that this cycle is combining the worst of both worlds: deep fall followed by slow recovery.
There are many reasons for that, and some exceptions to the pattern. Manufacturing appears to be recovering faster than it did after the two recent recessions. But construction, which had boomed to a greater extent than ever earlier in this decade, remains more depressed than usual.
The accompanying charts compare various aspects of the last four recessions — the two followed by slow recoveries and the last of the old type, as well as the latest downturn.
The lines all begin with the official beginning of the recession, allowing an easy comparison of how much worse that particular aspect of the economy became as the recession went on. The ending months of each recession are shown at the same point, making it easy to see how severe the downturn was and how rapid the recovery.
There are some aspects of this cycle that have no direct precedent. One is the performance of service industries. For most of the years after World War II, the United States economy became more and more oriented toward service jobs, and both employment and spending rose, whatever the state of the rest of the economy. But this time service businesses suffered, and they have been slow to recover.
That is particularly true for the industry that bears the most blame for the recession — financial services. The big banks were bailed out — Lehman Brothers excepted — but employment fell sharply during the recession and has continued to decline.
Another area that is weaker than in previous recoveries is the condition of state and local governments. Working for them was always considered safe, if not particularly rewarding. Neither of the two recessions before the latest one had any significant impact on those jobs.
But in this cycle, governments are facing severe budget shortfalls, and layoffs are accelerating.
In the private sector, there have been some signs of recovery in jobs, but those signs are faint. Instead, employers are getting more work out of the workers they have. Total hours worked are rising much more rapidly than total jobs.
That could be a sign of better times ahead. There are limits to how many extra hours are available, so the pressures to hire more people may be growing in some industries.
If those pressures do grow, there is no shortage of people who need work. The unemployment rate has remained stubbornly high, and the long-term unemployment rate — defined as the proportion of the labor force out of work for at least 15 weeks — rose to levels not reached since the government started compiling the figures in 1948. It has slipped a bit since peaking in April, but remains higher than during any previous cycle.
Floyd Norris comments on finance and economics on his blog at nytimes.com/norris.
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