Apparently, we’ve been in a recession for a year now:
It’s official: The United States is in a recession — and it started a year ago.
The nation’s economy peaked, and the recession began, in December 2007, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced today.
The group’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, the semi-official arbiter of these things, defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income, and other indicators.”
While analysts have been all but certain that a recession has been underway for months, there has been some debate over exactly when it began. Last winter, employers started cutting jobs and growth slowed significantly, but the decline appears to have accelerated over the summer.
The committee concluded that the start of the recession was December 2007 — due in large part, it said in a statement, to the decline in jobs that began that month. But it noted that many other data points confirm the diagnosis.
“The committee determined that the decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession,” the group said in its statement. “Evidence other than the ambiguous movements of the quarterly product-side measure of domestic production confirmed that conclusion. Many of these indicators, including monthly data on the largest component of GDP, consumption, have declined sharply in recent months.”
The NBER committee could eventually conclude that the recession has already ended. However, economists outside the group think that is unlikely, given that most economic data released in recent weeks have been getting worse, not better.
Just in case you were wondering
I haven’t heard the connection between the rapid acceleration of the price of oil and other energy related costs [like food] and its contribution to this recession. I believe that there’s a strong connection but it’s been missed by the news media and government officials.
Sad that the media only publishes this now. Anyone with half a brain could have told you that we have been in a recession sinced mid to late 2007. As for the rapid acceleration of the price of oil and energy related costs, I agree 1000% that it had(and continues to have) a lot to do with the recession we have been in. I mean c’mon….folks have been tapping into their savings to pay for gas, heating their homes, food shopping. Folks have not had any extra cash to spend and folks are reluctant to use their credit cards to avoid going even more in debt. One does not need to be an economist to understand….it is basic.
No Kidding. When did they figure that out? After they figured out how much the war was costing us? Or perhaps when they realized the lower payed worker in this country only makes around eight dollars per hour? Lets just hope they can defer a depression because that is right where they are headed!