America lost so many jobs in April that we could barely fit the numbers in this chart of historic downturns (and that includes all of the Great Recession)"

• The April jobs report showed the dire effects of the coronavirus outbreak on the US economy, with over 20 million jobs lost in a single month.
• Finance blogger $4 comparing the depth and breadth of previous economic downturns to the job losses already seen from the pandemic.
• The current job losses, measured as a percent decline from the previous employment peak, are already vastly deeper than any other post-WWII US recession, including the Great Recession after the 2007-2008 financial crisis.
• $4.

The novel coronavirus outbreak has devastated the US economy, with $4 for April showing a historically unprecedented surge in unemployment.

Finance blogger $4 during and after historical US recessions since World War II. The chart starts at the highest level of $4 at the beginning of each of the $4, and then shows the percent decline in the following months until employment returns to the pre-recession high.

The chart gives a fascinating look at how deep each recession was in terms of job destruction, while at the same time showing how long it took the economy to return to normal. Many historical recessions were relatively shallow and short, but more recent downturns have tended to take a longer time to return to pre-recession employment peaks.

The Great Recession that followed the 2007-2008 financial crisis, shown in blue below, was previously the worst post-war US economic downturn. Employment fell 6.3% between the December 2007 peak and the February 2010 low during that period, and it took a full 76 months — over six years — for employment to finally catch back up.

Despite that, the reduction in employment over the last two months dwarfs any decline from the rest of the chart. The number of Americans in non-farm payroll jobs has already fallen a whopping 14.0% from the February 2020 peak, as businesses have shuttered and companies have furloughed and laid off employees en masse in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Much of that occured in April, $4.

Here's our version of $4, with the current downturn in dark red:

$4

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