Why This Recovery Won't Fall Off The Track Soon

It feels as if the U.S. economic expansion has gone on far longer and cut far deeper into unemployment than the standards of postwar macroeconomic performance would have suggested. We may well be in a new world in which the traditional economic time limits don't apply. So far, this expansion has more than two years to go to beat the longest, but it still could set a record.

The nine postwar expansions identified by the National Bureau of Economic Research, measured from trough to peak, have averaged 50 months. The longest ones lasted 106 months (in the 1960s) and 91 months (in the 1980s). The present expansion, which started in March, 1991, is in its 77th month.