This bad, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office shows us:

If you are having trouble reading the fine print: The blue line shows job losses in the 1990 recession; the red line is 2001, and the green line is the path we are on now.

UPDATE: To clarify, these are not projections. This is actual job-loss data.* Pelosi’s office explains:

This chart compares the job loss so far in this recession to job losses in the 1990-1991 recession and the 2001 recession — showing how dramatic and unprecedented the job loss over the last 13 months has been. Over the last 13 months, our economy has lost a total of 3.6 million jobs – and continuing job losses in the next few months are predicted.



By comparison, we lost a total of 1.6 million jobs in the 1990-1991 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing; and we lost a total of 2.7 million jobs in the 2001 recession, before the economy began turning around and jobs began increasing.

*Pelosi’s office says they used Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers.

UPDATE2: Justin Fox looks further back, and puts the recession in percentage terms here.