Business Cycles: Is the Current Economic Environment Different?

Claudia Macaluso

Richmond Fed Economic Brief, 2026, vol. 26, issue 07

Abstract: Post-1988 unemployment cycles are significantly longer than earlier ones: 18.4 months for pre-1988 cycles, and 30 months for post-1988. The current cycle has been especially gradual, with unemployment rising steadily for 33 months — the longest on record without a recession following. In particular, the current cycle is atypical in that the sustained increase in unemployment occurs while GDP growth is, instead, strongly positive.

Keywords: business cycles; economic growth; employment and labor markets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.richmondfed.org/publications/research/economic_brief/2026/eb_26-07 Briefing (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedreb:102815

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Richmond Fed Economic Brief from Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christian Pascasio ().