It is official. We have been in "recovery" for 20 months. Recession Ended in November 2001 Thursday July 17, 9:35 AM EDT By Tim Ahmann WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The panel that decides U.S. business cycles on Thursday declared the economy pulled out of its recession after eight months in November 2001 and is now in a recovery phase. The announcement from the National Bureau of Economic Research confirmed what many economists already believed: that the economy has resumed growing, albeit slowly. "The committee determined that a trough in business activity occurred in the U.S. economy in November 2001," the NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee said in a statement. In making the determination, the panel of top-notch academic economists made clear it was not passing judgment on the economy's current health. "In determining that a trough occurred in November 2001, the committee did not conclude that economic conditions since that month have been favorable or that the economy has returned to operating at normal capacity," it said. In fact, it took note that employment -- one of the key factors it considers in making recession calls -- was stuck in the doldrums. "Indeed, the most recent data indicate that employment has not begun to recover at all," it said. Members of the panel, widely accepted as the arbiter of U.S. business cycles, had said determining when the recession ended had been complicated by the surprising gains in the productivity of U.S. businesses, which had enabled firms to boost output while laying off workers. They recently decided to give more weight to measures of U.S. gross domestic product in their deliberations, a decision NBER President Martin Feldstein said would likely make it easier to conclude when the recession ended. U.S. GDP has been growing slowly since late 2001, and the panel noted that it was now 3.3 percent above its pre-recession peak in the fourth quarter of 2000. The committee said the length of the downturn, which started in March 2001, was "slightly less than average" for recessions in the post World War II period. ©2003 Reuters Limited.
This is from The Onion, right? It can't be too factual because they didn't talk to the 2 million people who've lost their jobs in that time.
there is a specific definition of a recession...just because the economy isn't performing well...or just because there are other indicators at work...doesn't mean that we're in a recession.
This panel of economists is a tad slow.... we knew the recession ended at that point well over a year ago. This is kind of an odd statement to make today.
They have to keep repeating it so the unemployed people who have had their power turned off can hear it.
I think that the NBER make a preliminary End-Of-Recession call over a year ago. They made the official call now, since they are sure. I do not know why they are so late of the call. Maybe it has something to do with corporations restating their earnings, which in turn affects the GDP??? The article did say : Members of the panel, widely accepted as the arbiter of U.S. business cycles, had said determining when the recession ended had been complicated by the surprising gains in the productivity of U.S. businesses, which had enabled firms to boost output while laying off workers.
The only story here is that the average person's definition of a recession is different from the official definition of the word. I had a discussion like this with a friend of mine. He said the recession is still going on as long as people don't have jobs who want them. So, under his definition, the United States is in perpetual recession (oh, and it can't be just any job in his opinion. It has to be a job that the person wants). Employment is always going to lag behind the recovery. We've just seen a slower recovery than we've seen in the past. The economy is creating jobs (roughly 1.5 million in the last year - April to April), but we're adding too many new people to the ranks of the job seekers, and the new jobs can't keep up. Despite the high unemployment rate, as many people are employed now as there were immediately before the recession started. And job creation is actually better than in previous postrecession periods. It's interesting that the unemployment rate is so high. We're seeing a period when significantly more people are seeking jobs than in the past. I don't know what the reason for that is, but even had the economy been booming right now, we would've seen an uptick (not as high, of course) in the unemployment rate as we're adding more job seekers than we have traditionally added (obviously if we've got record number of people seeking work even though we're employing roughly the same number of people we did immediately before the recession when the unemployment rate was much lower).
Recession is good for the overall economy...it weeds out bad business, and the strong survive to be even better. People will find employment, it is out there...heck we are still hiring.... DD
But for how much? I still get job offers now, but most of them are way too low for me to accept. Some are 15-20K lower than my current salary and 30-40K lower then I was making last year. I just look at them and say "Are you serious???"
That's the whole point. There are jobs out there! There are not just the ones you want. If you have to take a job with a lower salary because of economic means, do it.
so he got economic bills and reforms and such through congress and managed to get them to hamper the entire US economcy all within 2 months of taking office? damn.
