Labor Union Blog

By Doug Cunningham

For workers the coming U.S. recession will mean they will be feeling it for years to come, not just the several months it typically takes for the economy to pull out of a recession. Economist Dean Baker is with the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

[Baker]: “Workers weren’t doing terribly well prior to the recession and we never really recovered from the last recession. So we saw wages fall through ’03, ’04,’05. Finally there was some wage growth
in ’06 and ’07 as the labor market started to tighten. But we’re just getting back to where we were before the recession. So we had an upturn that really didn’t offer very much for workers, and the unfortunate part of the story is the downturn is going to be worse.”