Theodor de Bry’s 1590 engraving of Secoton, from John White’s watercolors. Public domain.
The recession of 1990 and 1991 ended on the charts before it ended for workers.
If money is tight, the official recovery date does not hire you.
If you are in the middle, a jobless recovery means the office is open and the posting is not.
If you have savings, markets can heal while payrolls do not.
The National Bureau of Economic Research dates that recession from July 1990 to March 1991, alongside an oil shock from the Gulf War.
Unemployment kept rising after the trough.
People learned that the word recovery could arrive before the job.
Source: National Bureau of Economic Research, July 1990 to March 1991.