The Scariest Chart Ever.

Via Ezra:

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More at Nancy Pelosi’s Flickr (!) page.

Latest posts by Shani (see all)

  • With all due respect to Ms. Pelosi and the unemployed who this chart represents, but I think there is a bit of misdirection at play here.

    First, it only compares the job losses during this recession to the two most recent recessions. What about 1982? That was a pretty bad one …

    Second, citing absolute numbers like this does not give the whole picture. The American labor force has grown over the last thirty years. So a monthly job loss of 500,000 today, while staggering, is not as bad as the same monthly job loss in 1982. Divide the monthly job loss during each recession by the size of the labor pool at the time and you start to get a more representative picture of the situation.

    Yes, it’s a scary chart. But it’s been made scarier than it should be.