The recession is over.   The last piece has fallen into place, with the BLS announcement that employment rose in March.

Identifying the beginnings and ends of recessions has been difficult in recent decades because the two most important indicators, output and employment, have sometimes behaved differently from each other.  Most notoriously, in the recovery that began in November 2001, employment lagged far behind economic growth.  If one had gone by the labor market, one might have called it a three year recession.  But if one had gone by GDP, one might have wondered whether there was a recession at all. read more