According to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the United States experienced five recessions from 1980 to 2010. Following is the NBER’s list of the start and end dates for each of these recessions:
January 1980 – July 1980
July 1981 – November 1982
July 1990 – March 1991
March 2001 – November 2001
December 2007 – June 2009
Go to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Web site (www.bls.gov) and look up the monthly unemployment data since 1980. (Find BLS series number LNS14000000 and choose 1980 as the “from” date.) What were the unemployment rates for the starting and ending months for each of the five recessions? How long after each recession ended did it take for the unemployment rate to start to decrease, and how long did it take for the unemployment rate to return to the pre-recession level?