The recession's over!
“The recession is over.”
Strong words from Jeff Frankel, Harvard economist and member of NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee. His opinion is based off the March jobs report, which showed the economy added 162,000 jobs. Job market indicators were showing signs of life last July before turning positive last month. From Frankel:
This is the more definitive criterion, because a recovery is defined as a period of increasing economic activity. The nine month wait was painful. But the lag between positive income growth (June 2009) and positive job growth (March 2010) turned out to be shorter than in the preceding two recessions (one to two years).
Interesting comments from Frankel, especially considering his stature on the dating committee. He fails to give an exact time for when the recession officially ended, which is important because many pundits have differed on the recession’s ending, with dates ranging from last summer to last month.
Some skeptics aren’t so certain about Frankel’s declaration.
“I’m waiting for more than one month of somewhat encouraging employment data before coming to that conclusion,” writes University of Oregon economics professor Mark Thoma. “It’s always possible that one month is a blip, not a trend.”
