03 May 2024

The Longest Streak of Unemployment Rate at or Below 4% That You Can Remember

You have to go back more than half a century to find a longer streak of months with unemployment at or below 4%. Or as the memes and journalists desperate for clicks like to describe it, "Might this be the worst economy ever?" {Spoiler alert: no. No it is not.]

Only in the 1950s and 1960s did the US economy have a longer stretch of unemployment rate under 4%. It's now 30 months in a row of unemployment at 4% or lower. Hard to believe that the Fed will hit its target rate of inflation of 2.something without bringing unemployment above 4%, suggesting that this streak could end within a month or two, falling just short of the streak from the early 1950s. You remember that streak, right? [Second spoiler alert in a single post: no. No you don't. The last streak longer than this was from before you can remember.]


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