The last time US unemployment got this low, the economy got weird
But what happens next? One should hope events play out today better than after that 1969 milestone. A Federal Reserve history of the 1970s described it as a “turbulent time” for the American economy. And it sure was. The economy slipped into recession after the employment peak, one of four over the next dozen years. Meanwhile, the inflation rate that had begun creeping up in the mid-1960s would become the Great Inflation and hit 15 percent by 1979. From 1966-1982, the stock market fell more than 70 percent in real terms. By decade’s end, America was suffering a “crisis of confidence,” according to President Carter.
