The term “jobless recovery” predates the Great Recession that began in 2008, but it took many years for the economy to recover all the jobs lost in the crash after the subprime mortgage bubble popped. At its peak, unemployment soared past 10% in late 2009, only dropping below 8% by 2013—more sluggish than prior recoveries. Employers slowly restored payrolls, but the jobs deficit from the recession was so vast that, even by mid-2014, the economy had merely regained the 8.7 million jobs it had lost since 2007. Many workers spent months, even years, looking for jobs, and long-term unemployment reached historic highs.
Even into 2017, millions of Americans who wanted jobs couldn’t find them, or could only get part-time work. Labor market “slack”—which also counts discouraged and underemployed workers—reached record highs, and the share of the population with a job fell to the mid-1980s levels.
The New York Fed’s survey, which polls a rotating national panel of about 1,300 household heads, tracks inflation, price, labor market, and financial sentiment. Other findings were more moderate than the pessimism on future unemployment.
“There was an outsize downward revision to employment in the information industry,” Adams said. “The revised data show more clearly that AI is automating away tech jobs.”
