Recently Felix Salmon tipped me off (Chart of the day: The USA’s lost decade) to an Economist Chart purporting to show what an economic disaster the 2000′s were (Almost a lost decade).
They don’t post their data so I I tried to recreate it. I couldn’t do so exactly but did the best I could ( Recreated Economist Chart Data). I knew that the 1990′s ended at the peak of the technology boom and the 2000′s ended at just about the nadir of the real estate and banking problems so it was going to look pretty bad. So what I did was I calculated the carts above to look and see (for available data) if I could vary the starting year for the decade. That is, instead of seeing if the 2000′s ended in 2009 I varied looking at ten year windows ending 2008,2007,2006, and so on. My numbers don’t line up exactly so you’ll just have to take a look and see what I did and if you like it because I can’t tell what they did. Results below:
| Decade Ends in Year | Worst Decade For Income Growth | Worst Decade For Consumption Growth | Worst Decade For Payroll Growth |
| 0 (1950′s: 1940-1950) | 1940′s | 1940′s | 1960′s |
| 1 | 1990′s | 1990′s | 1960′s |
| 2 | 1980′s | 1980′s | 1960′s |
| 3 | 1950′s | 1980′s | 1960′s |
| 4 | 1950′s | 1990′s | 2000′s |
| 5 (1950′s: 45-55) | 1950′s | 1970′s | 2000′s |
| 6 | 1990′s | 1990′s | 2000′s |
| 7 | 2000′s | 2000′s | 2000′s |
| 8 | 2000′s | 2000′s | 2000′s |
| 9 (1950′s: 49-59) | 1930′s | 1930′s | 2000′s |
| Decade Ends in Year | W
orst Decade For Income Growth |
Worst Decade For Consumption Growth | Worst Decade For Payroll Growth |
| 0 | 1940′s | 1940′s | 1960′s |
| 1 | 1990′s | 1990′s | 1960′s |
| 2 | 1980′s | 1980′s | 1960′s |
| 3 | 1950′s | 1980′s | 1960′s |
| 4 | 1950′s | 1990′s | 2000′s |
| 5 | 1950′s | 1970′s | 2000′s |
| 6 | 1990′s | 1990′s | 2000′s |
| 7 | 2000′s | 2000′s | 2000′s |
| 8 | 2000′s | 2000′s | 2000′s |
| 9 | 1930′s | 1930′s | 2000′s |
The way I read this the 2000′s were not particularly bad. If we look at the three measures and various starting periods, it is only by payroll growth that United States that the 2000′s s seem to have been clearly lost. Otherwise the seemingly boom years of the 1950′s and 1980′s give them a run for their money as the worst.
And the last column isn’t particularly useful (nor is the last graph above) because it doesn’t account for population growth. If we use the decennial censuses to subtract off each decades population growth rate we see that 1950′s, 1960′s, and 1970′s had lesser job growth relative to population.
So it is hard for me to read too deeply into the observed data from the economic performance of American over periods of ten years ending in 0. I cannot see anything particularly interesting about the 2000′s except to understand them and unusually including the top of the peak as the start and the tough as the end.
