"The Recession Is Over," So Says the New York Times

In an article about the effect on retail shopping of high gasoline prices, the Times had this jaw-dropper:

...now, with consumers feeling short on cash after the recession, high gas prices are keeping some of them from shopping as frequently.

Really? "After the recession?" Is that because the CEOs are, once again. making out like the bandits that they are, with a 23% rise in pay from `09 to `10?

The current seasonally-adjusted U-3 unemployment rate is 9.1%. A year ago it was 9.6% The U-6 unemployment rate, which is closer to a real statement of things, is 15.8%, down from 16.5% last year.

So where are we now? This is a graph from Calculated Risk that shows loss of jobs versus time for every recession since the Second World War:

Note that the slope of the job losses and jobs recovery are very similar to the 2001 recession. The difference is that in the 2001 recession, the percentage of jobs lost was 2%; in this current recession, the percentage was over 6%. If the recovery rate persists at the same slope as the `01 recession, the unemployment rate would be back to normal roughly 72 months after the recession began, which is over two years from now.

Two things to keep in mind. First, a six year timeline from the start of massive job losses to the end of the job losses is right in line for the start of the next downturn. If economists believe that this recession is so over, then it is possible that jobs will start disappearing in the next recession before a full recovery from this one.

Second, the Republicans are actively working to sabotage what little recovery there has been. The whole point of the current debt ceiling brouhaha, from their perspective, is to make a debt ceiling deal so toxic that the Democrats cannot accept it, crashing the recovery (such as it is) and throwing millions more people out of work. Then the GOP goes into the next election, claiming to be the party of reason and compromise and blaming the Democrats-- a view that will be parroted by the Right Wing Noise Machine and the useful idiots in the Tea Party.

Meanwhile, President Cool as Ice has largely, until very recently, been unwilling to call the Republicans out on their economic sabotage. The Republicans see no reason not to continue on, because nobody is countering their propaganda.

If you think that is far-fetched, keep in mind that the Republicans were successful at neutering the stimulus and they've been able to cripple any further attempts to prime the economy and they have been somewhat successful in blaming the Democrats for that.