The National Bureau of Economic Research has announced that it
The committee announced Monday that it cannot yet declare an end to the recession that began in December 2007.
So, does this mean that the recession many have said has ended really hasn't?
Not necessarily. The NBER is assigned with the task of officially dating start and end dates to our recession and as they take their task seriously, they take their sweet old time to ensure that they get it right (or as close to right as economists can be). What this means to us is that the announcement does not signify that the recession is still in effect (although it could be), but more likely that the NBER is hedging to make certain that we do not experience a "double-dip" (which really wouldn't be a double-dip since it appears they are willing to combine the two into one much longer recession) before selecting their end date to the 2007 recession.
For instance, following the 2001 recession, the NBER took until July, 2003 to call the end of the recession that they dated to November of 2001 (over 18 months later). So for us to expect that they would call a recession end to sometime last summer (not even a year), considering the depth and complexity of this recession is laughable.
While I personally believe that the recession will likely be dated back to sometime in the summer of 2009, it is also possible that the scenario explained here by New Deal Democrat could play out and cause us to sink back into malaise, thus likely resulting in the NBER writing off the growth from mid-2009 through Q1 2010 (which is guaranteed to be positive) as a bounce as opposed to an actual recovery.
So, what does this non-call mean in the end? It means that the lack of a robust recovery has left us very vulnerable to falling back into recessionary conditions and that without substantial continued improvements in the labor market we will remain vulnerable for some time to come.