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"Payrolls rose by 162,000 workers last month, the third gain in the past five months and the most since March 2007, figures from the Labor Department showed yesterday in Washington."
"'I personally put lots of emphasis on employment,' Robert Hall, who heads the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, said in an interview. 'I would say pretty clear is a good description' for whether the economic contraction has ended, he said."
Since the Bloomberg article doesn't have all the data, I've found it elsewhere for your reference. Some highlights:-Average wages went down .1%
-Unemployment rate stayed at 9.7% because of population growth
-Long-term unemployed (jobless for 27 weeks+) increased by 414,000 to 6.5 million
-Average workweek was up by 0.1 hour to 34.0 hours in March
Do you agree that this increase in employment shows that the recession has ended? Do you see other signs that point to this conclusion? Or have you seen things lately that make you think the recession is not nearly over?
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a_m4UWCu_Rrg&pos=1
I feel like the first uptick is not very conclusive. Examining the graph posted earlier about unemployment after various downturns since WWII, in most cases the first trend back up was followed by another downturn. Once there is a consistent move upward, I will start to feel more comfortable.
ReplyDeleteAs to whether this has anything to do with a sign of the recession ending, I would say no. There are so many other factors and issues that pointing to one statistic and inferring that the recession is over seems a bit short sighted to me.
I don't think that this is the end to the recession. Although unemployement is a big part of it, we have not seen home values rise in a long time and foreclosure is still a reality to many people in the US. Also, we have not seen stock market prices anywhere near where they used to be, although they say this may be the new norm. Also, there really is no credit available to anyone these days. I feel like we are just getting our feet back on the ground, but I would say that the recession is hardly over. We need to get back to a strong economic point, where credit is available but not over abundant, where people are in homes they can afford, and where it is safe to do some investing.
ReplyDeletepayrolls might have rose, but even though it's the largest increase since March 07, I don't think it hardly makes up for the amount of people that were laid off or lost their jobs during the recession. The other data you gathered, Matt, definitely shows this recession isn't over. All of those other points need to be considered in determining the recession's conclusion. And with the unemployment rate staying the same and long term unemployed increasing, this shows it's definitely not over.
ReplyDeleteI also think that these statistics don't necessarily mean the recession is over. The continuing rise in long term unemployment coupled with the rise in payroll jobs shows a couple of things. First, many companies are adding temporary help which often doesn't include benefits and will most likely not be a permanent job. Second, people are more willing to take jobs with longer hours and lower benefits due to the impossibility of being able to find a suitable job. Kelsey also makes a good point regarding the inability to obtain credit and how that adversely affects the employment rate.
ReplyDeleteI would have to agree with Noah on this. These gains are great to see but until there is a consistent change then its hard to sell me on the fact that the recession is completely over.
ReplyDeleteEven though these are some positive numbers, we are still not out of this recession yet. The reason I think this is that the long term employment has went up by 414,000 and is at 6.1 million people overall. That is a very large number and if we were out of the recession that number would be going down. When that starts to occur and I could entertain the idea that we are coming out of the recession finally. At least unemployment stayed the same even with population growth.
ReplyDeleteI find it fascinating that the term "recession" is so widely manipulated for political reasons. According to the all knowing wikipedia: "a recession is now often defined simply as a period when GDP falls (negative real economic growth) for at least two quarters. Some economists prefer a definition of a 1.5% rise in unemployment within 12 months." However the GOP has used all sorts of metrics to emphasize how bad/deep this recession is and that it has gotten worse ever since the change in administration while the Democrats have been using different metrics to argue that the recession is over and that we are in a full blown recovery. We won't know for sure until we have the benefit of hindsight but I tend to believe that we are in a fragile recovery but are FAR from "out of the woods" as past recessions have many aftershocks that sent them spiraling back into recession--the Great Depression being the most obvious.
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