This recession is definitely different:
What is most depressing of all is that the red line above is actually a rosy viewpoint of the employment picture. If instead we look at the number of employed divided by the total population:
No change in this statistic, so workers have dropped out of the labor force thereby driving down the unemployment rate. Brilliant. You might say, “Hey, we are just back to the 1980’s level!”. But that was when one person could support a family.