When was the 1990s recession

The labor force participation rate is the share of the working-age population ages 16 and older that is in the labor force.

The employment rate is the share of the working-age population that is employed. Household income is the sum of incomes received by all members of the household ages 15 and older. Income is the sum of earnings from work, capital income such as interest and dividends, rental income, retirement income, and transfer income such as government assistance before payments for such things as personal income taxes, Social Security and Medicare taxes, union dues, etc.

Non-cash transfers, such as food stamps, health benefits, subsidized housing and energy assistance, are not included. More detail on the measurement and collection of data on income is available from the Census Bureau.

Conducted jointly by the U. Estimates of the unemployment rate, employment rate and the labor force participation rate are derived on a quarterly basis by combining three monthly CPS surveys. This allows for larger sample sizes of smaller demographic groups, such as Asian workers. The ASEC surveys collect data on the income of a household for the preceding calendar year.

For example, the latest ASEC was conducted in and contains data on income from The ASEC used a redesigned set of income questions , so the household income figures reported for calendar years to may not be fully comparable to earlier years. The ASEC tested the new redesigned income questions by asking the traditional income questions of five-eighths of the sample and the redesigned questions of the remaining three-eighths of the sample.

The difference reflects both the different questionnaire and the different sampled households responding to the questionnaires.

Methodological revisions in the CPS may also have an impact on the trends in household income. In particular, the revisions have an impact on the comparability of income data before and after that date.

The sample for the analysis consists of the civilian, non-institutionalized population ages 16 and older. Estimates of household income refer to the calendar year.

Estimates of the unemployment rate, employment rate and the labor force participation rate are for the first quarter of each year from to and for the second quarter of each year from to , non-seasonally adjusted.

The recession lasted from July to March , with the ending aligned with the first quarter of The Great Recession lasted from December to June , with the ending aligned with the second quarter of Drawing comparisons across the same quarter in each year avoids the effect of seasonal fluctuations.

The American housing market presented another sign of weakness, as in the second half of the s a large number of savings and loan associations private banks that specialized in home mortgages went bankrupt. Other causes of the early s recession included moves by the U.

Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in the late s and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in the summer of The latter drove up the world price of oil, decreased consumer confidence, and exacerbated the downturn that was already underway.

The sluggish recovery was a key factor in George H. Bush's defeat for re-election to the U. The economic downturn and the Gulf crisis pushed consumer confidence to an all-time low. School leavers at the end of were advised to delay their post-school holidays and apply for work immediately. Then there were the unexpected impacts. The economy and the workforce were different then, but there are echoes of the debate now about whether the government should be stimulating the economy more rather than holding to its top priority of achieving a budget surplus to prepare for future shocks.

By day, Tony Keaney worked as a manager at Telecom, now Telstra. By night, he was a volunteer at St Vincent de Paul visiting people in the Melbourne suburb of Box Hill who were struggling to buy food, clothing and white goods. In those days, Box Hill was more working class than it is now, and the suburb was beginning to attract refugees, who also needed help to establish. Keaney, now 84 and still a volunteer, visited four or five homes a night.

Cities like Geelong, reeling from the collapse of the Pyramid Building society in , suffered most. Tony Anderson worked at Ford for 33 years, until its demise in In the early s, he had a mortgage and a young family. He kept his job but knew people who took packages and struggled to find work afterwards. He is now the secretary of the Geelong Trades Hall Council and worries about young people taking out huge mortgages while wages are stagnant and jobs insecure. Paul Andrews, too, wonders how a new generation would cope with a recession.

After a year without work, he got a job. In a recession, a lot of those plans end up with doors slammed in their faces. Remembering the recession: 'The s experience changed my view of the world'.