>Quite possible. The latest unemployment numbers, in and of themselves,
>suggest the recession is over. -- mbs
You could argue that it ended late last year even - lots of things reached their extremes then, and have been trending higher since. In the U.S., that is. Much of the rest of the world ain't doing so good (except Oz).
There are some anomalies in today's employment report. Much of the gain in payrolls came from retail. But the seasonal adjustment techniques expect large layoffs in Jan and Feb, as stores undo their holiday-season hiring. But since there was little holiday season hiring, there aren't seasonal employees to lay off, so this comes out after seasonal adjustment as looking like an increase. It seems the labor market in the U.S. has stopped sinking, but strong hiring hasn't begun.
The pool of available workers (the unemployed plus those not in the labor force who report wanting a job now), a measure that Greenspan watched very closely during the boom, has now fallen for two consecutive months. At 5.8% of the adult population, it's back to 1997 levels. Between 1970 and 1997, it never got below 6.0%. At the 1989/90 economic cycle peak, the pool of available workers was 6.3% of the adult population. So, we're exiting this recession with the labor market tighter than it was at the end of the last boom. Productivity and unit labor costs better behave, or Greenspan may get anxious.
Doug