This was the month by month unemployment rate from nov 83 to nov 84

[Yo_Mama]

11. Yeah - and there's hidden unemployment

This is a graph showing the change (%) of covered employment by over 1, 2 & 3 year time sequences. It points out the huge difference between the recovery in the 80s and our current recovery:


To go further, Obama's reelection campaign will be deeply affected by the youth vote. Obama won by a huge margin last election - but among the components of that victory were both a literal landslide among the young voter, and a huge growth in first time voters, who are of course largely young.

With the horrible youth unemployment stats, I think votes for Obama in this population group will be far suppressed in comparison to 2008. This is the time series for 16-19 unemployment rates:


One of the reasons young people are winding up with so much college debt is that they can earn less while going to school and before starting college - higher education is being used as a substitute for a job.

Another problem is that "student" jobs are increasingly becoming "retiree" jobs.