Surely all these people losing decent paying jobs will have no impact on the economy right? Definitely not a recession right?
I can’t remember where I read it but from what I understood of the article a common outcome from central banks ramping up interest to dampen the economy is that they inevitably overshoot and make things much worse than they needed to. This can then result in such a bad down turn that in the long run doing nothing & letting inflation play itself out may have been better than intervening.
Its not yet apparent in the headline numbers so much; but you don’t need to see too many more reports of major companies reducing earnings outlooks and anecdotal words of caution from friends & family before it starts to look like we’re beyond technical and into an actual recession.
What’s the difference between a technical recession or an actual recession. Words are supposed to have meanings and recession is a well defined term with globally accepted measurement metrics.
If we are technically in a recession it means we are in a recession.
A recession is two consecutive periods of negative growth. So usually a “technical recession” means “we meet the criteria for a recession but we’re not experiencing the bad effects you’d expect (yet)”
The point is that the word recession has a meaning, the meaning is accepted worldwide, and we are in one. I would also dispute that we are not experiencing the bad effects. The polls seem to indicate the public is feeling quite a bit of pain.
The difference is the duration; and I would guess its done due to the vagaries of measurement as much as anything because its common for the initial numbers to end up being revised later. So 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth is a technical recession, and beyond that you’re in a real recession.
But the cynic in me will always suggest that while economists sometimes seem to think what they’re doing is a hard science, a lot of it seems to be more about the feels and what is expedient to their political view point.
Then on top of that, over the years i’ve read various arguments that GDP is kinda a piss poor measure of the economy anyway, and there’s more holistic ways of measuring how things are going. This article sums up a bunch of the opinions about it, of whose Craig Renney’s is the one I probably put more stock in - along with those suggesting using the Sahm Rule given it looks at employment which is probably a better measure for how actual people are getting along.
