From March 1965 to July 1970, the unemployment rate was below 5% every month.1
This is the longest streak ever recorded in modern economic history.
Since autumn 2015, the unemployment rate has remained below 5% for 125 consecutive months:
OK, this graph is not technically correct.
The unemployment rate rose to 14% in the first few months of Covid. But this wasn’t a true recession. There was no credit cycle. It was man-made. People on unemployment insurance were being paid not to work. Businesses were paid by the government to stay open.
The labor market recovered essentially immediately.
Of course, some might argue that the economic cycle would have continued as normal if the pandemic had not caused governments to spend trillions of dollars. This is a fair rebuttal.
But I think it’s a legitimate argument to call this the longest economic expansion in history.
There hasn’t been a real recession since 2009.
There was no credit cycle at that time.
There is no financial crisis worth mentioning.
The stock market just experienced two years missing from past 17. The S&P 500 is up about 14% annually since the beginning of 2009.
The economy continued to grow despite 9% inflation, the Fed hastily raising interest rates from 0% to 5%, tariffs, wars, energy shocks, and more.
At least, this is the most impressive economic expansion considering what happened.
This economic boom has not always been perfect. There are definitely sections of the economy that are in a difficult situation. Not all households benefited equally.
At some point the cycle will reverse. I don’t know when or why. Nobody does.
Since the end of the Great Financial Crisis, everyone who predicted the economy would collapse was wrong, often spectacularly.
The economy continues to progress rapidly.
Further Reading:
Some Things That Aren’t
1Then, from the beginning of 1974 until the spring of 1997, the unemployment rate remained above 5% for 279 consecutive months.
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