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Not to be snippy about it, but this "lagging indicator" stuff is getting a little tired. Supposedly this recession ended over a year ago, but the unemployment numbers are still "lagging" while everything else is just hunky-dory.

At this rate the unemployment numbers will be "lagging" right into the next recession. Sheesh.

I understand that everyone wants the recovery to happen overnight, but it doesn't work that way. When the economy goes into recession the hardest hit is always manufacturing jobs, you know!!! the stuff people spend money on when times are good. It took 5 years to recover from Jimmy Carter's recession and the unemployment rate was in the double digits and well into Reagan's 3rd year in office it was still over 8%.

If a Democrat was in office the liberal media would be reporting about this amazingly short recession and how the President should be enormously credited for keeping the economy from free falling after all that has happened since the NASDAC bubble bursted in 1999, the recessions start in 2000, the attacks of 9/11 and the corperate scandals just after that.

I feel we are damn lucky things were not a hell of a lot worse than they were, You can focus on the negatives all you want, I choose to think differently.

Cheers

but this "lagging indicator" stuff is getting a little tired

I do not believe our eyes should be on the non-farm payroll figures. These are reported by the large companies in our economy and most of these have been laying off workers. Most of these layoffs are and will continue to be absorbed by the smaller private companies that exist under the radar scope of the collection mechanism of this figure.

I think a better thing to watch is the unemployment claims which have continued to drop since the turn-around in late June or July. If this continues to go down (btw, it is not high at all from a historical perspective) and falls beneath 6% which should happen over the next couple of months, then I think we can know that even the lagging indicator has finally turned around.

Just my opinion, but when you see big business adding tons of jobs you can mark it down that you are witnessing the beginning of the end of an economic upturn and not what this article would suggest as the end of the beginning.

Remember, an optimist believes we live in the best of all possible worlds, while a pessimist fears this is true.