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2003, No. 9
Posted 2003-04-02

A National Recession

by Jeremy M. Piger

An interesting question to ask is whether the recent recession was a truly “national” event, or whether it instead was localized in just a few geographic areas. To investigate this question, the author computes the percentage decline in payroll employment during the recent national recession for each state and the District of Columbia. He also computes employment losses for eight geographic regions of the United States.