johan's Journal

Graph generated at the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics website:

You can't quite see the top of the line on the right -- it's above the 7.5 mark. Since the Great Depression, there've only been two periods in U.S. history when unemployment was this high:

1. All 12 months of 1975 (peaked at 9.0 in May)
2. Nov 1981 through Dec. 1983 (peaked at 10.8 in Nov-Dec 1982)

An interesting comparison the Dow Jones Industrial Average (from Google) for Jan 1981 - and Jan 1983 versus this year: [1]

[2]

So if 2008-2009 is like 1981, then this year, unemployment will climb to record levels and "the economy" will continue to suck mightily.

One important diferrence between 1981 and now is that the DJIA has just lost almost 50% of its value over the last 10 months. By contrast, the largest loss occurring in this period in the late 1970s and early 1980s was about 15% between Feb and Apr of 1980.

I keep wondering: Are we in for 1970s-early-1980s stagflation, or the Great Depression II? (Or perhaps something else (bad)?)

At the moment, i'm think we're in for something worse than the 1970s and 1980s.