Final Thought on Labor Day

Today, Labor Day, was the day that Americans pay honor to working men and women. Like other three day Holidays we celebrate, it unfortunately has come to mean nothing more than a three day weekend for most of us and an excuse for businesses to over hype a sale to pedal consumption of foreign-made merchandise we  don't really need.

It is with this in mind that we present the chart show below. Titled "The Scariest Jobs Chart ever," the chart shows how long jobs took to recover in each of the last 11 recessions dating to 1948.

For a majority of the first decade of the century, America has lost jobs.

As you can see, in the current recession the valley is much deeper and increasingly wider. If you combine the current Great Recession of 33 months of job loss with the the 2001 recession, which took 47 months to be corrected in terms of job losses, you have a total of  80 months, almost eight years, in the last decade were the US economy was shedding jobs.

So as the sun sets on Labor Day 2010, keep in mind that politics and the November elections and elections for many years to come will likely be dictated on how fast we dig out of this trench.