It's a fascinating economic "recovery" that's actually an economy shrinking.
The definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth, so it's funny to call the beginning of a recession a strong "recovery"
> The definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth
That’s not the definition of a recession:
> the often-cited identification of a recession with two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is not an official designation. The designation of a recession is the province of a committee of experts at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), a private non-profit research organization that focuses on understanding the U.S. economy. The NBER recession is a monthly concept that takes account of a number of monthly indicators—such as employment, personal income, and industrial production—as well as quarterly GDP growth.
The analyses I've seen indicate that a single top-line figure like GDP belies a lot of underlying complexity and fails to tell the whole story.
Feel free to provide specific critiques of these analyses. I'm certainly interested to hear your perspective, as the data is complex and COVID has made the world more than a little bit weird.
But snark and scare quotes do little to enlighten.
GDP is a single number, and reducing the entire economy to a single number is always going to be inherently reductionist.
That said, there are a lot of different signs, indicators, and numbers that suggest that the present economy is not really amazingly wonderful despite how inconvenient that is for the current administration and its boosters like the Times.
Obviously, inflation being really quite high (and going only upward) isn't a great sign.
Low unemployment is a strong indicator, though the fact that the labor participation rate is still at 1970s levels (when the labor force was still much more significantly gendered) is not. Labor participation is increasing slightly, so it's still not all doom-and-gloom, but it's not great. Low unemployment also means that the US is unlikely to be able to get its economy back to growing simply by hiring more people to be productive -- since everybody willing to work already is.
GDP declining is, as discussed, a direct measurement of the decline in the size of the economy.
The widespread "everything shortages" that are plaguing basically all corners of the goods economy is another -- and the fact that a year later the situation is even worse is not promising.
Overall, it's a bit disingenuous to talk about the amazing and stellar economic recovery that's going on. It's much more of an economic teetering-on-the-edge-but-maybe-it-will-stay-on-the-okay-side.
> It's much more of an economic teetering-on-the-edge-but-maybe-it-will-stay-on-the-okay-side.
I couldn't agree more! To be clear, I posted those alternative takes not because I buy into them as a complete alternative narrative, but rather to, again, encourage people to synthesize multiple points of view in order to get a more balanced picture.
Your comment actually does a very nice job of summarizing those points of view, so thank you!
The definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth, so it's funny to call the beginning of a recession a strong "recovery"