I’m working on a presentation that I will deliver to a group of human resources executives next week. Its focus is the downturn and the hard work many organizations are doing to communicate supportive messages to employees. I don’t envy HR leaders these days. Imagine trying to maintain a healthy level of employee engagement while we slog our way through one of the worst jobless recoveries on record.

There are a few highlights that will interest Today’s economy readers:

• Just about every downturn since the Second World War has been called “The Great Recession.” Journalists love a good play on words (in this case with The Great Depression, obviously), and economic slowdowns always trigger predictions of calamity. The Google News Archive shows references to the term dating back to the late 1940s. Google Trends reports that this time around, the phrase started to appear at the end of 2007. It peaked in the fourth quarter of 2008, and then again in March of this year when Dominique Strauss-Kahn, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, said this downturn will be the worst one we experience “in most of our lifetimes.”
• RBC Economics reported last week that it believes Canada’s downturn has been less severe than the ones we experienced in 1990-91 and 1981-82. Craig Wright, RBC’s chief economist, told reporters we are “nowhere close to the depression scenarios some were throwing around carelessly a short while ago.” Wright said that the “peak-to-trough” number will be -3.3%. That makes this downturn “shallower in terms of depth and duration.” The economy shrank 3.4% over four quarters in the 1990s, and 4.9% over six quarters in the 1980s. Wright also told reporters that “the recovery will be more modest” this time.
• Members of capital accumulation plans – which include defined contribution pension plans (CAPs), group RRSPs and more – have faired better than retail investors (full disclosure: this data comes from Sun Life Financial’s Group Retirement Services business unit, which administers about a third of the industry’s retirement assets). This has less to do with Sun Life Financial than it does with the way CAPs are designed to encourage asset diversification and regular automatic contributions, and the lower fees, relative to retail funds, available within employer-sponsored plans.
• Surprisingly, the S&P/TSX Composite index lost more than the Dow Jones Industrial Average at the end of last year. In the period that began Sept. 15, 2008 – the day Lehman Brothers announced its bankruptcy – and ended Dec. 31, 2008, the S&P/TSX Composite lost 27.1%. The Dow dropped 23.1%. This year has been a different story. Canada’s benchmark index is up more than twice its U.S. counterpart, in percentage terms.