What the early 1980s implies for unemployment today

ALTHOUGH AMERICA’S unemployment rate shocked almost everyone by falling in May, 20m workers remain out of a job because of the coronavirus pandemic. The official unemployment rate is 13.3%, though that rises to about 16% if you count people who say they are employed but absent from work. Many commentators worry that a large chunk of the unemployed will have no job to go back to, even as lockdowns ease and stimulus payments land in bank accounts. In a podcast hosted by Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, Andrew Yang, a former rival, said that “I’m privy to the thinking of many major company CEOs, and they are telling people confidentially that they are not going to hire back a lot of the people that they’ve furloughed or let go.” Will Mr Yang be proved right?