The UK is probably now in one, and the markets are reacting accordingly. Goldman Sachs hit the headlines with its promise to sack 10% of its employees - over 3000 people - even though it's about the only major bank still to be making profits, and even though its 'fast-burnout' approach to managing its staff means that all it needs to do is cut back hiring and wait for staff numbers to plummet.
But it does lead rather neatly on to this study from 2005 (via Chris Dillow) - people are not more likely to lose their jobs in recessions. (People in general, that is - people at major investment banks, yes.)
The rate of "separation" remains pretty much the same - between 3% and 4% a year in the US (unfortunately the study is US only). Instead, what happens is that the rate of formation of new jobs slows down - people are losing their jobs all the time, recession or not, but during recessions it takes longer to find a new one.
Our mental images of recessions consist of factories closing down and people being thrown out because those are what we remember from histories of the Great Depression, and because that's what makes it on to the news now. But you can't take a memorable picture of a manager in an office looking at a budget and deciding to get by with a team of nine, rather than hiring an extra person - yet, it turns out, that's what causes the unemployment.
It's a problem of generalisation: we tend to form an image of what is happening at a national level, and then assume that everyone's personal experience echoes that. So during the Sixties everyone was a hippie and loved the Beatles (or the Stones). During a war everyone is in the thick of the fighting. During a boom everyone prospers; and during a recession everyone has their job threatened.
But human experience is a lot lumpier than that. For a lot of people, the Sixties were pretty much like the Fifties - bad food, bedsits and skiffle bands. As seen in Band of Brothers, Capt. Richard Winters went through the close-quarter fighting of the Battle of the Bulge as an infantryman and never fired a single shot. During the long boom of 1997-2005, every year one in seven jobs in the UK private sector were destroyed. And, during a recession, your job is no less safe than at any other time.
Unless, as I say, you work for a major investment bank.