Surviving The Recession Cycle

[Nathan Grubb]

Just a moment ago, a topic was posted about whether or not to buy with the "impending recession." And as a newby, it just makes me wonder: if recessions are pretty much counted on in a cycle, are they all as bad as 2008?

I was working construction at the time, and we went from 40 employees in September of 2008 to 0 employees in April of 2009. Of our four competitors in that town, only one made it through to 2010. Is that a normal level of decline? Or was that just a particularly brutal recession?