Not sure there are "normal" economic cycles any more. The job picture has changed in ways that nobody had to deal with before.

The planet is filled with people of almost equal skills and education willing to do the same jobs for far less, and our modern systems of information and transportation makes this possible.

On top of that, individual productivity has skyrocketed. I can only speak for my own field of work, but the software and hardware available to me allow me to do work that would have required a roomful of draftsmen, engineers, and artists when I started out many years ago. Never mind printing outfits, typesetting companies, and the rest. Multiply this by MANY fields of work.

This phenomenon is actually quite recent, well within my own working lifetime.

I don't think a lot of people still really understand this. In some ways I'm amazed we still have any positive job growth.

Automation has finally hit the white collar worker.