A similar picture emerges for industrial production, which is up only 2 percent from its cyclical trough, compared with 6½ percent in 1990-91 and almost 20 percent on average after the other seven post-war recessions. Are jobless recoveries now the norm?
These developments are striking departures from past cyclical behavior, and they raise the question of whether some facet of the U.S. economy has changed. Given the very slow employment growth in the two years after the past two recessions, should we consider “jobless recoveries” to be the new norm?