Abstract
We have just passed through a decade of economic disruptions that we just didn’t see coming. Deceptively, this past decade’s opening year (2000) provided only pleasant surprises, beginning with the fizzled failure of the over-hyped and much-dreaded Y2K bug to appear and solid job growth that seemed to promise there would be no interruption of a long period of unrelenting American prosperity. Between November 1982 (the end of the deep 1981–1982 recession) and March 2001 (the end of the 1991–2001 expansion), total employment in the United States increased by an astounding 43.7 million jobs, with 38.8 million of these gained in the private sector. Visions of an ebullient post-millennial economy abounded. Unfortunately, the reality turned out to be punishingly different.