In thinking about this year's #EconJobMarket, one analogue is what happened during the 2008-09 financial crisis. A new memo by our AEA committee on the job market explores this: 1/7
https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/communications/memo-aug-11-2020

Using 2008 as the benchmark, the # jobs in JOE was 20.7% lower in 2009, 2.7% lower in 2010, and 3.1% lower in 2011. Full recovery by 2012 (0.9% higher than in 2008). 2/7

Weeds 1: we have to use 2008 as our benchmark because it's the earliest year we have microdata on job listings. There's some evidence that the job mkt in late 2008 was already somewhat affected by the crisis, so using 2008 as benchmark may understate the later impact. 3/7

Weeds 2: if we use aggregate data (which goes back further) & use 2007 as benchmark, # jobs was 1.1% lower in 2008, 20.7% lower in 2009, ~2.5% lower in 2010 and 2011, and had fully rebounded by 2012. 4/7

So, a similar story: one really bad year (2009) followed by two slight down years (2010, 2011). 5/7

Yes that doesn't bode well for 2020-21. However, keep in mind that economists have the lowest UE rate & among the highest salaries of any PhD discipline. Even if # jobs on JOE falls by HALF, that's still ~2,000 jobs, far higher than the # of new Econ PhDs produced in the US. 6/7

Here's the website of the AEA ad hoc committee on the job market so you can stay up to date: 7/7 and END https://www.aeaweb.org/joe/communications