In March 2008, we released the CofFEE/URP Employment Vulnerability Index (EVI), which provides a risk assessment by suburb of job loss in event of a serious downturn. It was based on an economic model that captured the major risk factors that would predicate job loss at a local spatial scale. Some data is now coming in that provides the capacity to assess the accuracy of our framework.

Today I have been working on part of a new book I am writing on the pathology of recessions. I have written a lot about this in the past and my last book was about this topic. But you can never say it enough – recessions impose huge social costs on the most disadvantaged members of our society and it is the responsibility of national governments to do every they can to avoid them. The neo-liberal onslaught on public policy has seen governments all around the world abandon this responsibility with obvious (ugly) consequences. Anyway, here is a way of thinking about all of this. It is not a happy story.