Tag Archives: recession

NBER Eggheads Finally Proclaim End of Recession

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              The NBER‘s Business Cycle Dating Committee, of which I am a member, announced this morning that June 2009 was the trough of the recession that began in December 2007.    It was the longest recession since the 1930s.

              It is the fate of the Committee to be teased mercilessly every time we make one of our formal declarations of a turning point in the economy.   We get it from both directions:    We waited too late to call the end of the recession, or we did it too early.     (Occasionally someone makes both criticisms simultaneously!)   Even The Daily Show got in on the fun this time. read more

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NBER Committee Holds Off Declaring Recession’s 2009 End Until It is Sure

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The NBERBusiness Cycle Dating Committee this morning posted an announcement that it had met in person April 8 – an infrequent event – but that it had not yet decided to call the trough in the recession that began in December 2007.    The meeting has led to lots of questions from the press over the weekend, for stories that appeared today, and then more questions today in response to those stories.  Here are some of the questions that have come up the most often, and my own personal answers, speaking for myself and not the Committee of which I am a member. read more

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Job Market Confirms End of Recession

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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

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