Recession is over according to the National Bureau of Economic Research
Well, did you hear the news? MSNBC.com published an article on Monday citing the declaration by the National Bureau of Economic Research that the recession is over.
You’re probably thinking, “Yeah, right.”
Though it seems unbelievable that the recession is over when there’s an average of 9.5% unemployment in the U.S., the receding economy is apparently now an expanding economy. The NBER says it’s been expanding since summer of ’09. However, they add that just because the economy is expanding doesn’t mean it’s doing it very quickly: “Economic activity is typically below normal in the early stages of an expansion, and it sometimes remains so well into the expansion,” the NBER said.
If you were part of the marketplace during the last recession in 2001, you’ll recall that is exactly what happened back then. It was really 2003 and 2004 before we started seeing some good stuff happening. Maybe that’s why our own local celebrity economist here in Austin, TX, Angelos Angelou, predicted earlier this year that we’d see a return to prerecession numbers in 2011.
What’s surprising to me is that this research group cites December 2007 as the beginning of the recession. Huh? I would have said it’d started sometime in 2008. An article from HR Magazine in May 2008 (which gives a great graphic of the last 100 yrs of recessions, by the way), talked about bracing for the economic downturn… which I guess was technically underway by then.
As odd it as might seem, the ending date of the recession seems about right based on what I’ve seen with my clients and their job searches starting to produce results, the lessening of layoffs, and what recruiter friends have been telling me.
Although many of us aren’t exactly ready to open the bubbly and start singing “Happy Days are Here Again,” maybe we can let out our collective breath and embrace this glimmer of hope.
Angela Loëb is an author, speaker and co-owner of Great Occupations. She and her partner, Jay Markunas, help people make successful career transitions through workshops, “pajama learning” webclasses, personalized consulting sessions, as well as through The Job Search Boot Camp Show. Find out more at www.greatoccupations.com.