The percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed has fallen 0.6 percentage points over the last 3 months with declines in all 3-How has the economy done in the past after a sequence like that?

Here it is for the last 4 months

Aug. 80.3%
Sept. 80.2%
Oct. 79.8%
Nov. 79.7%

The table below shows what happened before in cases when this rate fell 0.5 or 0.6 percentage points over a 3 month period with declines in each of the 3 months (I did not look at cases when it fell that much over 3 months if it did not fall in each of the 3 months).

Month/Year	3 Month Change	Previous Month's %	Months to equal or exceed	Lowest Intervening %	Previous 6 Month Change
1949 Mar	-0.6	63.1	18	61.3	-0.1
1949 Apr	-0.5	62.7	17	61.3	-1
1952 Aug	-0.6	65.1	4	64.5	0.5
1954 July	-0.6	64	7	63.4	1.1
1970 Sep	-0.5	69.7	21	68.8	-0.5
1974 Oct	-0.5	71.2	32	68.9	0.1
1974 Nov	-0.6	71	29	68.9	0
1980 April	-0.6	75.1	15	73.9	0.3
1980 July	-0.6	74.5	9	73.9	-0.4
1991 Jan	-0.5	79.4	47	78.1	-0.5
2001 Aug	-0.6	80.8	Never		-0.5
2022 Nov	-0.6	80.3			0.8

  

If we look at the first case, 1949 March, we have the rate falling 0.6 points over the 3 months of Jan., Feb. and March. It was 63.1% in Dec, of 1948. It only got back to at least that high 18 months after Dec. 1948. In the meantime, the lowest it fell to 61.3%

In the 6 months before Dec. 1948 it had gone down 0.1. I look at this because in our current case, the rate was growing at a good clip for the previous 6 months. In many of the cases listed here the rate was already on a downward course. So the 3 month period I show might not indicate that bad things are to come right now.

The 3 cases closest to what we have just had are 1952 Aug., 1954 July and 1980 April. The rate was actually going up the previous 6 months. The 2 cases from the 1950s saw the downward trend end pretty quickly with very little overall decline. The 1980 April case is the only one that looks bad. The overall drop was 1.2 percentage points and recovery took 15 months.

There have been larger 3 month declines but those are more serious that what we have seen this year so I did not want to include them. I just wanted similar cases.