RSSNBER: U.S. Recession "Officially" Began in December 2007
By Kathy Lien | December 01, 2008 | 1:17 PM | 0 Comments
The National Bureau of Economic Recession final admits that the US in a recession and it is about time! According to official recession dating agency, the US economy hit a peak in December 2007. According to the WSJ, the peak marks the end of the expansion that began in November 2001 and the beginning of a recession. The expansion lasted 73 months; the previous expansion of the 1990s lasted 120 months.
Two consecutive quarterly declines in gross domestic product is not what the NBER uses to judge a recession. They instead look at 4 key monthly economic indicators, including employment, industrial output and sales.
In the fourth quarter of 2007, GDP shrank by 0.2 percent while retail sales dropped by 0.4 percent in December. Non-farm payrolls started printing negative numbers in January with Friday's November data expected to mark the tenth consecutive month of negative job losses.
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