That word–recession–has started appearing again. In the news. On the web.
I remember the word littering the 6 o’clock news in my teens in the 70’s. I had some vague understanding, at that point, that the recession limited what we could have for dinner, like the weather dictated what coat I wore to school. A childhood memory.
Then there it was in the early 80’s. No clue about that one. I was painting houses, having earned an expensive undergrad degree in English, climbing rickety ladders to paint 2nd floor exterior windowframes–and with no health insurance. I hadn’t watched TV in 4 years and wouldn’t for 18 more. There was no web. But at least that word, being batted about in the mainstream, was not causing me any loss of sleep.
Our last recession was in 2001. I don’t remember noting that one either, probably because I had had a steady, benefitted job for years and my social/political perspective was smaller, even, than street-level. In fact, it probably the size of a sidewalk square. We’re at where we’re at in any frozen moment.
Now, having been cramming on the sociopolitical situation of others for the past 5 years, I hear ‘recession’ and it seems an outrageously euphemistic, even pitiful, “in denial” attempt to describe what is going on for us economically here in the United States. Now, I need to know what a recessions really is:
From www.marketwatch.com (DowJones owns it…):
To measure economic activity, the NBER uses four monthly indicators: payroll growth, real income growth, industrial output and real business sales.
Another common definition of a recession goes something like this: A recession is when you don’t have a job; a depression is when I don’t have one.”
There it is, that other word! The word we REALLY never hear. Why do I get the feeling that ‘depression’ has become merely an historic term? There have been multiple recessions, yet only one Depression. Capital D. DowJones’ site had no definition of depression beyond ‘much worse than recession’. Clearly, that happened back in the 30’s, when one could sell apples on the corner or moonshine behind the barn to subsist and the New Deal package of public assistance programs were just a gleam in the eyes of radial idealists.
What happens now? Will our ‘onset of recession’ become a depression? Our unemployment rate reached a high of 5% in December. The Depression Era rate was 25%. That seems to be a substantial difference, doesn’t it?
There’s a wrinkle, however. Actually, they’re probably closer to a series of major, neatly-ironed pleats. ENTIRE categories of persons, counted as unemployed in the 1930’s, are now excluded our unemployment numbers.
Who now doesn’t count that used to? Well, 2.2 million current inmates in U.S. prison, + those with mental illness, + veterans, and + others on disability.
Add these folks back in? We get a 25% unemployment rate, identical to Depression Era unemployment. There are not nor have there ever been enough jobs in the ‘natural’ course of our corporate strain of capitolism, for everyone. This is not changing.
What to do? It’s going to get even more interesting out there…
I have a confession: Economics was the only class I dropped in college, so forgive me for switch-hitting to the clinical side for one last suggestion…
Depression also shows up as a broad-spectrum mental illness ‘lid’ cured, somtimes, by lifting that lid to find origins, truth. Perhaps we could also call the ‘early warning signs’ of clinical depression–a recession–with treatment for each being an immediate search ‘within’ to see what’s really going on inside.
“Preventive economics, anyone?”
