Hey, CBS! Way to Pay Attention!

I just had to make a cou­ple of com­ments about this CBS News report five days ago.

At the three minute mark, Scott Pel­ley says “One thing we noticed today is how stub­born unem­ploy­ment has been.” Nice of you to notice, Scott.

They then put up a chart show­ing the last ten reces­sions and Scott says:

“All you need to notice here is how they are most­ly V shaped.”

Here is the chart.

All you need to notice is that they are indeed most­ly V shaped, which means that they are not all V shaped. Odd­ly, the two that are decid­ed­ly not V shaped are the two pre­vi­ous to the most recent. Note that the up slope of the recent down­turn is very sim­i­lar to the up slope of the pre­vi­ous two. It is just that the recent reces­sion was so much deep­er than the oth­ers it is a longer way up.

Giv­en that CBS News “just noticed” the stub­born unem­ploy­ment, I guess it may take some time for them to notice the trend of the past three recessions.

Bill McBride at Cal­cu­lat­ed Risk (where I got the graph) attrib­ut­es the slow job recov­ery “to the lin­ger­ing effects of the hous­ing bust and finan­cial crisis.”

I am not aware of McBride’s expla­na­tion (if any) for the pre­vi­ous two slow job recoveries.