Comparing this recession to the last five

Justin,
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Your reference to 2001- 2005 has 2005 repeated within the string. Other than that, somebody should show this data to our Congress and Senate.
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They are acting as if we are facing a V or U shaped recession. Many economists do not think that this is the case based upon inherent structural difficulties within our economy that mimic the Great Depression. If it had not been for a combination of FDR's New Deal and WWII, I suspect that the economic period may have been referred to as the lost "score."
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Further, a world-wide consumer-driven economy without a consumer is simply a recipe for muddle-through existence. The American public has been the consumer of last resort while the government has turned up the volume on the printing presses and now along with China and some Arab institutions are the lenders of last resort.

Looks like the previous administration's policies have given us an object lesson in how to extend a recession, or at least in how to keep a recovery from helping the labor force.
So I'm all for trying something different.

At what point does a recession become a depression; and will it take the goverment a year later to declare it as it did this current recession?

Thank you.

Also, what factors do you think played in making the recovery from the 2001 recession so anemic? I think the mistake we made was cutting taxes the same time we went to war; but maybe the tax cut was what gave us any recovery? It kinda looks like they were simply a bandaid that stopped a full correction from occurring.

It would be nice to see on this graphic bullets of the key legislation (if any) that targeted the recession, to help determine the relationship between legislation and return to normalcy.

jeremiah,
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What would be considered key legislation? Would the highway bill of '05 count? What about the prescription drug add-on for Medicare? Further, how would one isolate the policy initiatives from the Fed's monetary actions? I suppose one could attempt to do a large graph but that is a lot of work even for one as smart as Justin.

I've been doing this chart after every employment report for several months at angry bear.

But I think you 1981 data is wrong. My data from BLS does not show that severe a drop in 1981. Bill Polley's charts does not agree with you either.

Quick question? Job losses tend to be a lagging indicator right? Or has that changed over time due to the speed of our information flow? That would be neat to see as graphed on maybe a GDP bar chart.

bryan -- I'm not so sure that job losses are now a lagging indicator. Caterpillar had a record sales year in 2008, and enjoyed hefty profits, yet laid off 20,000 people (IIRC 20% of its global work force.) Companies aren't waiting to cut jobs, they seem to be doing so pre-emptively in order to maintain profit margins.
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As to the chart -- I think it highlights the differences between "cyclical" and "externally created" recessions. The "deep" recessions are all externally created -- 1974 was caused by the oil embargo, and 1981 was caused by Greenspan raising interest rates. In both cases, the same forces that created the recessions brought about the end of them -- OPEC started selling us oil again, and Greenspan brought rates down.
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The current downturn resembles an "externally created" recession, but there is no entity that can end it -- its structural, and there is no OPEC or Greenspan that can simply change policies and get the economy moving again.
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IMHO, this looks most like the Depression -- another "structural" downturn. And its going to be the kind of thing that is best served by "waiting it out", and spending money to reduce the impact on those affected, rather than trying to shore up the structures that are inherently unsound.

If it means anything, the curve of the current job losses (as a percent) is steeper than any of the others over a similar 9-month time period, and doesn't even show a change in slope. That is disturbing, but, I would think, impossible to predict what's next from that.