at least that guy seems to have a good idea that this economic problem did not just start. many don't realize that the US economy (and other highly advanced countries) started to slow significantly in the late 60's early 70's. in the US this was after about 2 good decades of boom post WWII were everyone was seeing real income growth annually. when the economy's of other countries started to slow back in that time frame is when they came asking for payments (in gold) that the US owed on WWII debts. this is why Nixon took the USD fiat so the FRB could increase the money supply and increase inflation and decrease those obligations as the USD was no longer fixed to the gold price. in the business world of nations and debt this is what they do, it's the "nice" way of defaulting on debt. this is also when they started to manipulate the data used to calculate the CPI to understate inflation, this drastically reduces the amount of monies that the treasury has to disperse in terms of increasing SS benefits
those of us that have always lived in the metro area have been well aware of employment problems for many decades. I grew up in Philly and graduated college in 89 at the top of my class. after about 2-3 months of job searching, I wasn't getting any responses and that was why I joined the military. I had actually wanted to go right out of HS but my parents talked me into putting it off and hopefully getting over it. I had friends from college that returned to their home city's the next year and many also had employment problems.
as the saying goes "things move slower in the south". the economic problems in the country have finally hit the interior and this is why many conservatives in rural America there think it is a new development when it surely is not.
WORKING PAPER #564
PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS SECTION
May 2011
Version: May 4, 2011
Job Loss in the Great Recession:
Historical Perspective from the Displaced Workers Survey, 1984-20101
Henry S. Farber
Princeton University, NBER, IZA
http://www.irs.princeton.edu/pubs/pdfs/564.pdf
* Page 6 is were it talks about job losses according to education and how that has changed
I also attached a page from the OECD Economic Outlook 2011. It shows the difference between this recession and others in terms of GDP loss and recession recovery.