What’s the Opposite of a Jobless Recovery? A Jobful Recession
The US economy appears to have contracted in four of the last five quarters, yet payroll employment has continued to grow. That can’t last.
The jobful recession-that-isn’t-quite-a-recession can’t go on forever.
Photographer: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
The phrase “jobless recovery” dates back to at least 1938, when the end to a recession that had begun the previous year wasn’t immediately followed by strong employment growth. For the next half-century, jobs bounced back after recessions as gross domestic product and other economic indicators did, so there was little need for the term. But slow employment growth in the early 1990s brought it back, and the economic situation of the early 2000s seemed to pretty much define jobless recovery, with nonfarm payroll employment still falling nearly two years after the recession arbiters at the National Bureau of Economic Research had determined that the economy began growing again.
In the above chart, I’ve used the average of GDP and the lesser-known gross domestic income — another measure churned out by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis that should in theory be identical to GDP but never quite is — because the combination is probably a more accurate reflection of economic activity than GDP alone. It also has some current relevance.