DJ. WSJ(3/14) Recession Arbiter Says US Economy May Be On Mend
By Robert Gavin
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal
futuresource.com
The nation's arbiter of recessions said that the economy may be turning the
corner, adding official weight to recent upbeat economic data and the growing
consensus among economists that a recovery is under way.
The nonprofit National Bureau of Economic Research stopped short of declaring
the recession over, but the group, which pinpoints the peaks and valleys of the
U.S. business cycle, cited the improving employment picture as evidence that
the downturn may be ending. The Labor Department reported last week that the
nation added 66,000 jobs in February, the first employment gain in seven
months. Also noting improvements in manufacturing, sales and other sectors, the
NBER said in a memorandum posted on its Web site: "The decline in activity that
began last year may be coming to an end."
The NBER, which declared in the fall that the U.S. went into recession in
March, is likely to collect and review data for several months before
officially calling its end. For the last recession a decade ago, NBER waited
until December 1992 to declare that the recession had ended in March 1991.
Responding to some economists' assertions that there hasn't been a recent
recession, NBER said that "there has unquestionably been a recession, even
though it wasn't quite severe enough to offset fully the powerful special force
of productivity growth to bring about the usual sustained drop in real GDP." |
