NBER adjusting its definition of recessions

From the Washington Post, the National Bureau of Economic Research is trying to find a way to fudge it's definitions so it can call the end of the recession. I'm not sure how I feel about this, in that it seems that the economy is growing, albiet sluggishly, but in general people are worse off. The economy being up some means that the stock market is up some, so my retirement fund is up some. But that's not what people use to buy dinner, or pay the mortgage, unless there's nothing left.

"While NBER has yet to declare the recession over, the reality is that real GDP bottomed two years ago," economist David Rosenberg of Merrill Lynch & Co. told his firm's clients yesterday.

"Employment . . . has never been down so much this far into a post-recessionary phase," he said, noting that payroll employment is still 2 percent below its peak, compared with being roughly 5 percent higher at the same point in prior economic recoveries.

The current situation "makes the early-1990s 'jobless recovery' look like a hiring spree," he added.

(SNIP)
Of the National Bureau of Economic Research's four traditional monthly indicators, payroll employment is unambiguously still down.

But, the committee noted in its statement, "the other monthly series also paint a mixed picture."

Industrial production -- the output of the nation's factories, mines and utilities -- rose for a while but hasn't recently and remains well below its previous peak, according to the Federal Reserve.

Inflation-adjusted personal income, which excludes transfer payments such as Social Security benefits, has been rising slowly since late 2001. The number is prepared by the Conference Board, a business research group, using Commerce Department data.

And the inflation-adjusted sales measure, also produced by the Conference Board using Commerce Department data, has increased solidly since the autumn of 2001.