Citation
Kalleberg, Arne L. & von Wachter, Till M. (2017). The U.S. Labor Market during and after the Great Recession: Continuities and Transformations. The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 3(3), 1-19. PMCID: PMC5959048Abstract
The Great Recession of 2007–2009 created the largest economic upheaval in the United States since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Although economic downturns are a recurring phenomenon, the most recent recession was exceptional in its duration and depth. It was the longest recession since the Great Depression. At eighteen months, from December 2007 to June 2009, it exceeded the sixteen-month recessions of 1973–1975 and 1981–1982; the average period from peak to trough of post–World War II recessions was 11.1 months. The Great Recession was also especially severe; both GDP and number of jobs declined by about 6 percent and median family incomes declined by about 8 percent. The Great Recession was particularly worthy of its name because of the protracted slump in employment that followed even after the recession was officially over, as assessed on the basis of the dating procedure of the National Bureau of Economic Research. As a result, during the Great Recession unemployment rates skyrocketed, housing prices and stock portfolios plummeted, and the lives of millions were disrupted. By some measures, over 30 million individuals lost their jobs, and the rate of long-term unemployment doubled its historical high (Song and von Wachter 2014). Household net worth dropped by 18 percent, or more than $10 trillion, the largest loss of wealth in the fifty years since that the federal government has collected data on wealth accumulation (Jacobsen and Mather 2010). The Great Recession did not affect all subgroups within the population equally; rather, the impacts of the economic downturn differed for different groups, according to their members’ gender, race, and ethnicity. Men, the less-educated, and African Americans were especially hard hit.URL
http://dx.doi.org/10.7758/RSF.2017.3.3.01Reference Type
Journal ArticleYear Published
2017Journal Title
The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social SciencesAuthor(s)
Kalleberg, Arne L.von Wachter, Till M.