photo taken from uml.edu
Is the recession over?
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Yea, I believe that Obama is giving the people more confidence in the system with his plans.
No, it's still going on.
Sort of. If you judge it based on a return to a nominal GDP growth rate, then no. If you use the technical definitions that the government tends to use, then yes.
Yea, you can't look at the GDP growth rate though now because it's every quarter. Last one was in July. GDP is not the sole indicator also, because service industries aren't included and is a growing industry.
So I guess it all comes down to the unemployment rate, which Bernanke said will take some time to recover from.
I don't know what version of GDP you are talking about but anything with measurable economic activity is included. Especially services. The things that aren't included are values that are not price adjusted or things occur off books.
And nominal GDP doesn't care about the quarterly rates so much as the level of economic activity and growth over time.
Unemployment by the way is a lagging indicator, so it always takes time to recover, not just in this case. But in this case it is far more likely to be systemic in its nature, ie lots of people with presently unemployable skills in the job market.
That's only because firms won't hire until they know they will secure their profits again.
Yea, it's not the best indicator though, because things are overstated/understated a lot, just like the CPI (consumer price index).
So that means what in relation to a recession? Firms may not hire because people in the labor market are not in possession of the skills they need, or they may be making capital investments instead. Their profits are not necessarily the reason to hire or not.
Yes it actually does. With more workers, the profits are less. Profits = revenues – expenses. Employees are the expenses.
It has nothing to do with the skills. I know we live in a knowledge society where we are shifting from manual labor jobs to those that require ongoing training and require more intellect, but that's not the reason why we are in the recession to begin with.
That may not be why we are in the recession, but that sort of unemployment has nothing to do with a recession.
And profits do equal revenues – expenses. But more workers do not mean a reduction of revenues. Usually they entail more revenue or more productivity.
Who the heck knows. We shouldn't even care too it doesn't even matter. All we have to do is worry about our own situations and we will be fine.
Don't get what you mean by "That may not be why we are in the recession, but that sort of unemployment has nothing to do with a recession."
That's not necessarily true with workers entailing more revenue or productivity. If they were productive and brought in more revenue, they wouldn't of been fired in the first place. The reason why people have been losing jobs in the recession is because the firms aren't bringing in enough revenue, so the employees aren't being productive.
No.
You are the one who said that's why we are not in the recession. So the point was that this kind of unemployment has nothing to do with whether we are in a recession or not. So why even bring up the unemployment rate at all?
What are you talking about?
"So I guess it all comes down to the unemployment rate…." – You do remember writing that don't you?
It becomes really hard to have a debate when somebody forgets their own points.
It's also hard to have a debate when someone can't admit they are wrong.
It was just confusing the way you worded it in your previous post. Come on Sun Tzu, you know I don't forget these things often.
Not really. I don't see where there is a connection between unemployment and economic recovery. At least, not for this most recent recession. It's mostly monetary or financial in its nature.
Dream on!
Unemployment has a lot to do with monetary or financial issues altogether.
Don't know. Can't trust what the government says. They didn't warn us the recession was coming a year ago. Who is to say they aren't lying now?