Recession, S-Curves and Digital Equipment Corporation - History of Computing: Learning from the Past - page 180

early 1980s, since the DEC was founded to the time that DEC was sold to Compaq.
The data in table 1 is from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The
NBER is considered the official arbiter of recessions, but

“the NBER does not define a recession in terms of two consecutive quarters
of decline in real GDP. Rather, a recession is a significant decline in eco-
nomic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,
normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial produc-
tion, and wholesale-retail sales” 2 .

Table 1. Recessions of DEC period generated from NBER data 3

Date Duration Time since last

recession

Peak
unemployment

Aug. 1957-April 1958 8 39 months 7.5%

April 1960-Feb. 1961 10 24 months 7.1%

Dec. 1969-Nov. 1970 11 106 months 6.1%

Nov. 1973-March 1975 16 36 months 9.0%

Jan. 1980-July 1980 6 58 months 7.8%

July 1981-Nov. 1982 16 12 months 10.8%

July 1990-March 1991 8 94 months 7.8%

Source: NBER

DEC Employees 1966 to 1976

DEC net profit 1966 to 1976

30,000

80,000,000

70,000,000

25,000

60,000,000

20,000

50,000,000

$ 40,000,000

15,000

30,000,000

10,000

20,000,000

5,000 10,000,000

0

0

1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976
year

1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976

year

Fig. 1. DEC employees 1966-1976 Fig. 2. DEC net profit 1966-1976

There are a number of different recession shapes that occur in literature the most
common being V-shaped, U-shaped and W-shaped. DEC suffered, like most other com-
panies, in these recessions but shielded its workers from redundancy by redeployment

2 National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/
3 National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/cycles/cyclesmain.html