Cold water on job stats

Talk about sobering. This chart, courtesy of Calculated Risk, looks at job losses, in percentage terms, for all the recessions going back to 1948, and the number of months it took for losses to become gains. The arrow shows the current recession. What's especially disquieting is that businesses in the current economy have learned to live with many fewer workers, and so their hiring is likely to be much less robust than, say, in the 50s, 60s and 70s, when there was such a thing as re-hiring.