By Doug Cunningham

For workers the coming U.S. recession will mean they will be feeling it for years to come, not just the several months it typically takes for the economy to pull out of a recession. Economist Dean Baker is with the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

[Baker]: “Workers weren’t doing terribly well prior to the recession and we never really recovered from the last recession. So we saw wages fall through ’03, ’04,’05. Finally there was some wage growth
in ’06 and ’07 as the labor market started to tighten. But we’re just getting back to where we were before the recession. So we had an upturn that really didn’t offer very much for workers, and the unfortunate part of the story is the downturn is going to be worse.”

Baker says this recession could well be more severe than recent ones because of the credit crisis and housing market collapse. That leaves workers without the ability to turn to credit to weather the economic storm. And it means there won’t be the same pent-up demand that helped the economy in the past pull out of recession. The Center for Economic And Policy Research says even a mild recession this year would add 3.2 million workers to national unemployment by 2010.