In the last 5 years, American employers have lost over $150 billion of productivity to depression alone. That is more than the GDP of 28 different States during the same period.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
There seem to be many causes of depression. One cause is profound loss, grief. Economic hardship we know is linked to depression. We don't have a full picture.
To my mind, the main reason for the Depression in the United States as a whole, is the bondage of debt and the spirit of speculation among the people.
Recession is when a neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose yours.
If you look at the US economy over the last 15-20 years wages have been stagnating or even declining.
The job numbers are positive. We've had more jobs created now than were lost during the recession. We're seeing that the creation, we're seeing those numbers not only grow but shift toward the private sector and shift toward full-time employment and these are all signs that the recovery is taking some hold but we're not out of woods.
Even when America's economy has been by all measures healthy and the unemployment rate low, some businesses suffer or fail and lay off workers. But nearly always, a simultaneous and even greater burst of new jobs has been created to offset the jobs lost - millions of new jobs every year.
A while ago I did a story comparing the change in employment rates in recessions in the U.S. and in Europe, and what I found was that America fired a lot of people and rehired a lot of people faster than Europe. That difference is disappearing, and that is a problem.
There were a lot of manufacturing jobs lost over a long period of time and particularly after - during the Great Recession. We've had some recovery in manufacturing employment as the economy's recovered.
Declines in specific industries can never ignite a general depression. Shifts in data will cause increases in activity in one field, declines in another.
In the five years since the end of the Great Recession, the economy has made considerable progress in recovering from the largest and most sustained loss of employment in the United States since the Great Depression.