{"id":410253,"date":"2010-03-09T16:28:16","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T21:28:16","guid":{"rendered":"tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a00d834519bc269e20120a91c05f0970b"},"modified":"2010-03-09T16:28:16","modified_gmt":"2010-03-09T21:28:16","slug":"pets-treated-as-though-the-recession-were-actually-a-golden-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/410253","title":{"rendered":"Pets treated as though the recession were actually a golden age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/brandmediaweek.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d834519bc269e201310f829902970c-pi\" style=\"float: right;\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Cat\" class=\"asset asset-image at-xid-6a00d834519bc269e201310f829902970c \" src=\"http:\/\/brandmediaweek.typepad.com\/.a\/6a00d834519bc269e201310f829902970c-300wi\" style=\"margin: 0px 0px 5px 5px; width: 293px; height: 209px;\"><\/img><\/a> <\/p>\n<p>While the Fed declared the recession to be officially over last September, millions of Americans remain skeptical\u2014leaving many economic crystal-ball gazers to reach for all sorts of indicators that&#8217;ll supposedly tell us how the economy is really doing. The folks at Packaged Facts recently weighed in with what has to be the hairiest indicator of all: pet spending (properly termed &quot;Pet Parent Spending,&quot; since it&#8217;s probably not kitty doing the shopping). No, nobody&#8217;s claiming that volume sales of chew toys should replace the GNP, but it is interesting to see the manifold correlations between the economy and what people will drop on the family dog or cat. For one thing, while 2009 was the worst year on record since the Great Depression, pet spending was actually up 5 percent (to $53 billion), with some items registering staggering growth (cat snacks, for one, up 15.3 percent over 2008 sales). But with the jobless rate still hovering around 10 percent, what can explain this countertrend? According to the report, 83 percent of dog and cat owners &quot;cite their pets&#8217; emotional support as helping them to survive the difficult times.&quot; So, that&#8217;s it, folks: Fido gets a treat because he loves you\u2014employed or not. <\/p>\n<p>\u2014Posted by Robert Klara<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While the Fed declared the recession to be officially over last September, millions of Americans remain skeptical\u2014leaving many economic crystal-ball gazers to reach for all sorts of indicators that&#8217;ll supposedly tell us how the economy is really doing. The folks at Packaged Facts recently weighed in with what has to be the hairiest indicator of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3984,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-410253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3984"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410253\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}