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by dragonwriter 1186 days ago
> As I remember it the job market was doing well up until investments banks began failing in mid 2008

It was doing pretty similar to today in unemployment % terms until 2007, when that started getting worse too, with 6 years prior to that of declining incomes for virtually the entirety of the income distribution; if you call that “well”, then right now is doing great.
1 comments
bjourne 1185 days ago
According to this site, the US unemployment are was low at the beginning of 2008: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/UNRATE And according to this site, it was low in the EU region: https://www.dw.com/en/europes-unemployment-rate-hits-histori...
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dragonwriter 1185 days ago
> According to this site, the US unemployment are was low at the beginning of 2008

The local minimum of unemploymwnt before the 2007-2009 Great Recession waa 4.40%, reached several times between October 2006 and May 2007, with oscillations up to 4.5-4.6% in between. By the beginning of 2008 it was up to 5.0%. Yes, in general terms these are all “low”, but they are also all significantly higher than unemployment has recently been (last month it ticked up to 3.6% from 3.4%, that 3.4% tying the low reached in 1968-1969 and not seen in between.)

Saying that the “high” effective Fed Funds Rate of 4.58% is “causing unemployment” today with unemployment at 3.6% is somehow more true, and therefore distinguishing the current situation as worse, than, say, the 5.21%-5.28% effective rate over May 2007 causing unemployment when that was at 4.4% requires very slippery standards.

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