Particularly in hard times, it’s crucial to make the right assumptions in strategic planning. Despite claims that the current recession is “unprecedented,” it seems to be following many of the same patterns the four previous ones did—patterns that may offer insights into the performance of sectors in the coming months and years. All four recessions, like the current one, began with a core underlying shock that then spread through the economy in a fairly predictable way, withfalling sales and EBITA in the consumer discretionary sector, and usually with similar declines in IT. In contrast, consumer staples didn’t suffer significantly in the last three or health care in the last two. The energy sector was among the latest to be hit in three of the recessions, though it was among the latest to recover in all four of them. The exhibit shows the sequence of decline and recovery in these and other sectors.

To learn about these and other patterns, read “Mapping decline and recovery across sectors” (January 2009).