You need to show this as a percentage of the population. The population in 1958 was about half what it is today. That is part of the reason there are more unemployed is there are more people.

Even without it being a percentage of the population, it's obvious it is going to take longer and longer to get back to zero (peak)..... if ever.

Look, this is seriously misleading for the reason edpell suggests, although I would think it should be shown as percentage of workforce rather than of total population. There is another figure along these lines in the blog the post is tied to, but most people aren't going to see that. Yes, the situation is very bad, of course. But it is NOT as bad as this graph suggests and by following the mainstream media crowd in focusing on such images without placing them in historical context you are fanning the flames of hysteria that are helping to make things even worse. We have enough things to be scared of without erroneously magnifying the bad news. If all we have to fear is fear itself, "news" like this is, indeed, scary. I am a regular and eager reader of Common Dreams, but if this is an indication of the care that goes into selecting news stories, I have to say that I'm forced to wonder what less obvious problems I've been missing. I hope I am not being overly critical--I know that selecting and screening this stuff must be a tough job, but this seems important enough that I feel the need to be frank. Thanks for considering this and for all the good work that goes into this site.

In 1958 the US was a manufacturing based economy. We made stuff, we were unionized, we had a real middle class and bank were just banks, not large financial institutions as they are today. The nations economy has changed from making stuff to shuffling paper in the form of bad debt and speculation. I agree with freeweeling above, it will take many years before we will ever reach that zero line, if ever.

Barry Ritzholt responds to criticism of his chart with the following:

1. The chart shows that the 2001 recession/job recovery was much longer than the 1991, which was much longer than 1982. Why would you think that is not significant?

2. Population is irrelevant, what matters is total civilian labor pool. Do you believe that the population OR the Labor Pool is so much larger today than it was 6 years ago? How about 18 years ago? We are discussing minor differences in total employment.

3. On a percentage basis , we are MUCH DEEPER than 2001 and 1991, and we are now about as deep as 1973 and 1985 — and they were already in the process of turning around. We show no signs of that yet.

The author fixed the faulty vertical numbers scale here:

http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/joblossespostwarii.jpg

According to the adjusted chart (at the website posted by Erthian), then we are halfway to the bottom of the Great Depression. However, we now have twice the population, so it seems to me that the numbers equal out. We ARE in a depression now. The Republicans scream about worker productivity, but we don't produce much of anything anymore, we just push around pieces of paper or serve hamburgers. We need a complete overhaul of the country and a boatload of new representatives, plus a large number of CEOs rotting in jail.

It may be that modern recessions are longer (and shallower on a job loss percent scale) because the people are more dependent on monstrous elite enterprises today that move slower than human-scale enterprises that were more prevalent in the early 20th century. I've heard that the elites are trying to minimize job losses to maintain their stranglehold on the society. If they can steal money from the people's treasury to make the corporate payroll during a recession they'll sure do it.

Wheeeeeeee!!

...and the GOP candidates said our economy was basicly sound.

Absolute numbers, percentages, and time from peak are all important.

Wheeeeeeeeee! is right! Hang on to your hats- and your wallets, for the Cheney/Bush Great Depression! Wasn't it just the other day that the MSM first admitted that anything close to a recession was even remotely possible? I'm thinking that even Limborg fans are going to become a bit nauseous by this ride. They'll blame Obama of course, but their credibility is taking a similar slide!

First of all, the original source of these graphs should have been cited in this article, and Barry Ritholtz at Big Picture did. The original source is calculatedriskblog.com (CR).

Second, if the follow-up graph that was provided at CR and at Big Picture was posted here it would have answered some of the questions posed by readers of this article, because the follow-up graph normalizes the job losses by taking into account total labor force increases over time.

And by the way, danielsomers, the current job problem is as bad as the graph (the follow-up one) suggests. In fact, as a percentage of the labor force the current recession is on par with 1981, is on track for overtaking 1974 & 1958 in the next few months, and may very well overtake the 1948 recession for the worst job losses since the 1930's by sometime this summer. People are going to have to deal with the fact that we're in a lot of shit right now, and fundamentally we're in worse shape than before in terms of our ability to effectively solve the mess we're in (e.g., total debt to GDP = close to 400%, we're in hock galore to foreign governments, etc.).