Center for Business and Economic Research - Ball State University


CBER Data Center
Projects and PublicationsEconomic IndicatorsWeekly CommentaryCommunity Asset InventoryManufacturing Scorecard

About

Commentaries are published weekly and distributed through the Indianapolis Business Journal and many other print and online publications. Disclaimer

RSS Feed

Disclaimer

The views expressed in these commentaries do not reflect those of Ball State University or the Center for Business and Economic Research.

Recent

Two Key Economic Lessons in One BillHoosiers face trade-offs and opportunity costs in the wake of SEA1.

Time to Fix Economic Development PolicyAllocating tax dollars to land development won’t cause economic growth.

The Unanticipated Effects of SB1Businesses, governments and households may all feel the effects.

The Stupidest of PoliciesThis whipsawing of tariff rates has unnerved financial markets, which on Wednesday, were toying with a liquidity crisis.

View archives

Top Tags

jobs and employment 261
economics 201
state and local government 188
education 186
economic development 171
indiana 171
budget and spending 145
taxes 144
law and public policy 142
workforce and human capital 139
Browse all tags
Reporter / Admin Login

September 27, 2010

The End of a Recession

This week the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee called the recession over in June 2009. Faithful readers will recall that I have long felt the recession would formally be considered over early last summer. It is actually pretty easy to see in hindsight, but to many Americans, the recession doesn’t feel over. That’s normal too. The formal definition of a recession is the period that lasts from the peak to the bottom of the business cycle. In other words, a recession lasts from the last day of the boom through the bottom of the bust. At the beginning of a recession, times are still good (I missed the start by the better part of a year). When it is over, things are still bad – as evidenced by more than a year of static or climbing national unemployment rates and weak demand for goods and services.

It is good to look back on the recession and think about where we’ve been and how this recession stacked up against others. First, it was longer than any we’ve had since the Great Depression, but just barely. The decline in national production (our Gross Domestic Product) was 1.8 percent. That’s the same drop we saw in the 1990-1991 recession which lasted only two quarters, but much better than the 1980 recession when the total economy shrunk by 2.5 percentage points.

The inflation rate has remained tepid (thanks in part to much lower house prices). In this respect, this has been the mildest of post-war recessions. Most surprisingly to most, the average unemployment rate during the recession was lower than in both the 1980 and 1981-1982 recessions. And, while the unemployment rate continues to rise after the recession ended, it remains a good point below the 1981-1982 peak quarter. The Misery Index during this last recession marked it as nearly the mildest on record. The Misery Index is the sum of inflation and unemployment – known also as Jimmy Carter’s great contribution to public policy.

The real factor that made this such a difficult recession was that it disproportionately cut the wealth of more than half of American families that both own a home and have stock market-based retirement funds. Here the loss of value was matched only by the Great Depression and hit far more households. But the real pain seems to have come after the recession.

The slow and uneven job growth combined with shockingly fast productivity growth eerily signals that much of our economy has gone through a structural change. While unemployment rates for college grads runs 4.6 percent, for high school grads it is well over 10 percent. It is still too early to tell, but some of the warning signs in place suggest many of the 8 million jobs lost in this economy won’t come back in the places and occupations in which they were lost. If that is so, and I am afraid it is, it heralds a long and painful readjustment.

Link to this commentary: https://commentaries.cberdata.org/532/the-end-of-a-recession

Tags: unemployment and the labor market, recession, jobs and employment, prices and inflation


About the Author

Michael Hicks cberdirector@bsu.edu

Michael J. Hicks, PhD, is the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research and the George and Frances Ball distinguished professor of economics in the Miller College of Business at Ball State University. Note: The views expressed here are solely those of the author, and do not represent those of funders, associations, any entity of Ball State University, or its governing body.

© Center for Business and Economic Research, Ball State University

About Ball State CBER Data Center

Ball State CBER Data Center is one-stop shop for economic data including demographics, education, health, and social capital. Our easy-to-use, visual web tools offer data collection and analysis for grant writers, economic developers, policy makers, and the general public.

Ball State CBER Data Center (cberdata.org) is a product of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University. CBER's mission is to conduct relevant and timely public policy research on a wide range of economic issues affecting the state and nation. Learn more.

Terms of Service

Center for Business and Economic Research

Ball State University • Whitinger Business Building, room 149
2000 W. University Ave.
Muncie, IN 47306-0360
Phone:
765-285-5926
Email:
cber@bsu.edu
Website:
www.bsu.edu/cber
Facebook:
www.facebook.com/BallStateCBER
Twitter:
www.twitter.com/BallStateCBER
Close