Emergency Savings: Is Six Months Still Sufficient?

Recently I was perusing unemployment duration data on the BLS website (yes, this is what personal finance bloggers do), and noticed that in early 2015 the average duration of unemployment is still around 33 weeks.

Looking back through the BLS unemployment archives, it becomes evident that only rarely did any month exceed 20 weeks in terms of unemployment claims.

Recessions typically lead to prolonged unemployment; however, I think this recession differs in its approach: hardened job cutting practices have become the norm and employers hesitate to hire at any sign of economic trouble in the name of profitability – making job security nonexistent for employees.

Are we really in such a deep recession if employers hadn’t laid off so many workers so quickly? Employers saw dim economic indicators, so to maintain profits regardless of lower revenues they laid people off which led others to see them and spend less. Corporate profits may have suffered for a quarter or two but might the economy have come roaring back faster? But that is irrelevant here…