Ben Young

This Is Not Your Garden-Variety Downturn

I agree with the author that extreme caution is in order. Regarding percentage comparisons with employment in the great depression (25% vs now 7.6%). A more interesting comparison would be actual human beings without jobs or severely underemployed. I think that the number at the peak of the depression was:

13.5 million
vs today
11.6 million

and these calculations were much more conservative/unadjuste... in 1937