It ain’t over yet — at least officially.<\/p>\n
This morning, the Business Cycle Dating Committee at the National Bureau of Economic Research — a nonprofit organization that, among other things, officially determines when recessions start and end — announced<\/a> that “[a]lthough most indicators have turned up,” it has not yet decided to declare the recession through.<\/span><\/p>\n The report does not signal that the economy is necessarily still undergoing contraction rather than expansion — just that “indicators are quite preliminary” and “[t]he committee acts only on the basis of actual indicators and does not rely on forecasts.” (It describes how it determines peaks and troughs here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n Harvard economist Jeffrey Frankel, a member of the Business Cycle Dating Committee, declared “[t]he recession is over” on his blog<\/a> just last month, citing improvements in employment and real income. Most academic and governmental economists agree. But though gross domestic product starting rising more than half a year ago, the job market remains brutal, and several other indicators sluggish.<\/p>\n