Originally Posted By: DBMaster
It may meet the technical definition of a recovery, but as many of you state, where the rubber hits the road is what is important.
I have heard some older terms resurfacing over the past few years:
Jobless Recovery
Stagflation
Recession merely refers to decrease in the GDP over a specified time period. For most of us that is meaningless, but if the news you hear causes you to change your spending habits it can be self-fulfilling prophecy. I believe we have seen a lot of that lately, including in the hiring market.
Actually its slightly more complex than just a decrease in GDP.
In the United States, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is generally seen as the authority for dating US recessions. The NBER defines an economic recession as: "a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales."[5] Almost universally, academics, economists, policy makers, and businesses defer to the determination by the NBER for the precise dating of a recession's onset and end.