On Friday, more bleak economic news: 651,000 jobs were lost in the U.S. in February, pushing the unemployment rate to 8.1%. Recession has reached all of our neighborhoods and workplaces; the Star Tribune on Sunday documented the stress facing two small Minneapolis businesses and their employees.
The latest numbers in economic news threaten to lose meaning for two reasons. First, the news has been almost exclusively negative in recent months. Second, the numbers themselves become difficult to gauge in context. What does 651,000 jobs lost or 8.1% truly mean? Clearly, it means hundreds of thousands of people suddenly without work – and millions of family members affected as a consequence. But broadly, the litany of economic announcements leaves us with a generalized, anxious sense of gloom.
U.S. leaders are aware of this. In an interview published Sunday, President Obama noted he doesn't "think that people should be fearful about our future," and stressed that not all financial institutions are foundering.
Still, the prevailing message is one of economic freefall. And as householders, employees and business owners, we respond to that message with an anxiety that undermines recovery efforts. In part, this is because a recession of this severity appears unprecedented – it is to nearly all of us – and placing it in context is a challenge.
History helps. For example, the recession that started in 1893 pushed unemployment to estimated levels nearing 20%, and in bleak 1932, unemployment exceeded 23%. While the number of jobless Americans is higher now than it was then, the percentage of us looking for work is substantially lower today. In my view, that's useful information.
As a companion to federal and state stimulus efforts, we ought to commence a public outreach effort to remind Americans that while most of us do not remember it, we have weathered more acute economic stress before and will do so again. In the inaugural speech made famous by his maxim that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself," FDR also called for a leadership of frankness and vigor, which he pursued with a very intentional effort to communicate confidence to the American people through the fireside chats and other media.
Words alone won't do the trick. But actions without words leave us only with some daily economic diagnosis, delivered in unfamiliar language and out of context.
