March 2004 saw strong job growth after many months of declines or weak growth. The new March jobs data provide an opportunity to examine labor market and other economic trends in the three years since the recession began in March 2001 and to compare these trends to the same three-year periods in the business cycles of the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s (see Table).

As shown in the charts below, this business cycle is the only one since the 1930s to still be suffering a job loss after three years. The private sector has lost 2.5% of its jobs (2,792,000), U.S. manufacturing has lost 15.9% of its jobs (2,704,000), and even when incorporating the 3.1% gain in government jobs (657,000), the labor market on the whole has still lost 1.6% (2,135,000) of all jobs. In the prior three business cycles, instead of still being in the hole, the economy had actually generated 2.7% more jobs after three years.

Not surprisingly, poor job creation has led to higher unemployment:

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