Click above for Figure 1: Coming Up for Air: Current Job Recovery Slower than after Recent Recessions

The Great Recession officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, although its impact was delayed in Iowa (where job losses began in May 2008, and did not begin recovering until the end of 2009). The chain of events is by now familiar: The collapse of an $8 trillion housing bubble led to a dramatic decline in aggregate demand (triggered not only by the accompanying financial crisis, but also by the blow to household wealth as home prices and home equity fell). As consumer spending and business investment both slowed, unemployment rose dramatically — swallowing over 6 percent of nation’s job base.

The recession was stark in its depth and its duration, and the recovery has been painfully slow. Figure 1 captures this in a comparison of the trajectory of postwar recessions (and recoveries) for the U.S. and Iowa. For the nation, the 2007 recession far exceeds — in its length and in its jobs losses — those of any other postwar downturn. Even if the national economy adds 208,000 jobs per month (the average monthly rate for the best year of job creation in the 2000s), by one estimate, it will take eight more years to struggle to the surface. For Iowa, the jobs losses were deeper in the double-dip recession of the early 1980s, but they are likely to last longer this time. By the same criteria (assuming monthly gains equal to best monthly average of the last decade), Iowa is still over 18 months from getting back to its peak pre-recession employment threshold.

Click above for Figure 2: Iowa Jobs Deficit Remains Deep Following Last Recession

This, of course, understates the real problem. It is now approaching five years since the onset of the downturn and the labor force has continued to grow throughout this period. We are 36,000 jobs short of the pre-recession peak in Iowa, and 89,000 short of the jobs we would need to keep pace with population growth at pre-recession employment rates. In order to clear this jobs deficit within three years [see Figure 2] we would need to add about 2,500 jobs a month. Since the recovery began we have averaged just over 1,000 new jobs per month.

The impact of unemployment has been uneven geographically across Iowa, as shown in the map below, which tracks unemployment by county from January 2006 through June 2012.  The jobless rate in most counties rose sharply in early 2009, and stayed high through mid-2011.  Marked improvement is evident in most  most counties by June of this year. [Figure 3].

Click here for Figure 3: Iowa Unemployment Rate Grows, Falls Unevenly Across Iowa, 2006-12

As dismal as the unemployment rate has been in recent years (peaking nationally at 10 percent in October 2009 and not reaching below 8 percent until September of this year), it does not capture the extent of the damage done by the recession. Uncounted in the basic unemployment rate are those so discouraged they have left the labor force and those working part-time jobs because that’s all they can find. Furthermore, the unemployment rate by itself understates the severity of the problem because it does not reveal the extended periods for which many have been out of work. Of the nearly 13 million unemployed, less than half (about 5.9 million) currently receive unemployment benefits — and many more will face this cliff when they lose extended benefits). This long-term hardship more often affects blacks, Latinos and those with a high-school education or less.

Click above for Figure 5: Underemployment Also Rises After Recent Recession

Click above for Figure 4: Longer Unemployment Duration After Recent Recession

Figure 4 and Figure 5  capture these broader measures of unemployment’s human impact over the last decade in Iowa.  Although Iowa fares better on most of these measures, we have seen dramatic spikes in underemployment (a measure that includes those too discouraged to look for work, and those working part time involuntarily) and long-term unemployment (lasting longer than 26 weeks). In turn, unemployment does not only harm the prospects of the unemployed; because there is more competition for existing jobs it means lower wages and benefits for those working, a blow to lifetime earnings for young people unable to gain a foothold in the labor market, an erosion of retirement security for older workers, and a loss — to workers and consumers alike — of productive potential, innovation and investment.

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