CALIFORNIA BUSINESS MINUTE
The Recession is Over?
09-21-10
Hi, I am Tim Johnson and welcome to the California Business Minute
The recession is over, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research,
NBER the entity that declares when recessions officially begin and end.
The panel of experts that made the decision identified that the recession ended
in June 2009. It apparently lasted 18 months, making it by duration the longest
recession since World War II.
The panel at NBER examines the statistics of the Gross Domestic Product which
measures the total value of the economy. Plus, it reviews incomes, employment
and industrial activity. NBER identified that any future downturn in the economy
would constitute another recession. The last time that happened in such short
period after a recession was in 1981 &82.
So why doesn’t it feel like the recession is over?
Millions of jobs have been lost, millions of homes have been repossessed and
California’s unemployment is higher today (12.4%) than it was in June 2009
(11.6%) when the ‘supposed’ recession ended.
Mark Zandi, economist at Moody’s best captures the feelings of Americans, when he
said in an interview with CBS News in January 2010, “ The recession is history
only in a very technical sense. It is probably in a sense only an economist can
really appreciate. Not until we start to see jobs will, I think people believe
the recession is over.”
Let the celebration begin.
I am Tim Johnson and this has been the California Business Minute.
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