30 September 2002, 09:01  NBER Not Ready to Say the U.S. Recession Has Ended

/www.bloomberg.com/
By Siobhan Hughes and Carlos Torres
Washington, Sept. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The economists group responsible for dating U.S. recessions isn't ready to say the recession that began in March 2001 has ended, said Robert Hall, chairman of the business cycle dating committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
``That is a real open question, so we are just going to wait,'' Hall told the National Association for Business Economics. The NBER is a private group based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which charts expansions and contractions in the U.S. economy.
The U.S. economy grew at a 1.3 percent rate in the second quarter after expanding at a 5 percent rate in the first quarter and a 2.7 percent pace in the final three months of 2001. The six economists who form the business cycle dating committee are not certain whether the recent slowdown is part of the recession or whether it represents a pause in a continued expansion, Hall said.
If the U.S. economy continues to grow, ``we would then place the end of the recession sometime in November or December,'' he said. He also said that ``the latest'' the recession could have ended is March 2002, because that is when the number of jobs in the U.S. economy hit a recent low.
The group will be watching a report due out this Friday on the employment situation in September, Hall said. Economists in a Bloomberg News survey expect that the U.S. economy failed to create any jobs, the worst performance since April, as the jobless rate rose to 5.9 percent.
``A lot will depend on the number on Friday,'' Hall said. If payrolls decline, ``that's definitely going to give us pause.'' Still, ``if employment comes in strong on Friday, and looks strong in early November, that may well provide the basis for some action.''
The NBER defines recession as ``a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade,'' according to its Web page.

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