Call us the last hold-out, but even after last Friday’s dismal employment report, which claimed that 101,000 private sector jobs were lost in February, and despite last week’s 2.8% drop in the S&P … we still don’t believe the economy has fallen into recession. So far, the most reliable numbers we study are telling us that growth has slowed, but remains positive.
Employment numbers are not the most reliable statistics. They tend to be revised, up to a year after their release – and sometimes dramatically. For all we know, revisions issued months from now could tell us that employment numbers actually grew between the end of 2007 and the start of 2008.
We prefer to base our decisions on numbers that cannot be argued with. For example, Unemployment Insurance Claims actually declined, according to last week’s figures. At 50,000 to 60,000, the number of UI claims indicates that growth is indeed slow. But this is well below the number of claims we associate with a real recession.Read more...
