It really doesn’t matter if the GDP, the local economists, the national pundits or your barber is telling you the recession is over. Most of you don’t think it is. In our latest poll, over 60% of the respondents said they don’t believe the recession is over.
“I think the recession is over,” UO economist Tim Duy told the Oregonian this week, while “gazing past his young daughter … into sparkling waves off Hawaii.”
Nice work if you can get it, but many Oregonians can’t find a job and the state’s unemployment is among the highest in the nation. Duy and others also like to call this a jobless recovery.
It really doesn’t matter if the GDP, the local economist, the national pundits or your barber is telling you the recession is over. Most of you don’t think it is. In our latest poll, over 60% of the respondents said they don’t believe the recession is over.
“I think the recession is over,” UO economist Tim Duy told the Oregonian this week, while “gazing past his young daughter … into sparkling waves off Hawaii.”
Nice work if you can get it, but many Oregonians can’t find a job and the state’s unemployment is among the highest in the nation. Duy and others also like to call this a jobless recovery.
Some think it cannot be a recovery until jobs return.
Ed Ray, OSU president and an economist, wrote in an opinion piece: “Recovery appears to be taking hold. But then came news that by now must seem familiar to many Oregonians, who have heard it many times following periods of economic difficulty: Oregon’s portion of the recovery will take a while. And don’t expect many jobs to accompany it… Why?”
Oregonians aren’t the only ones to feel the recession hasn’t receded.
The International labor Organization this week questioned whether the recession was really over since wages continued to drop. In a statement issued Tuesday, the ILO said real wages worldwide declined for a second year in a row. The ILO said it expected wages to slide even further in 2009. In the first quarter of the year alone, real monthly wages sagged in half of the 35 countries that submitted data, compared to their average in 2008.
Summed up Chicago Sun-Times columnist Terry Savage recently: “The American public is starting to get more than mildly annoyed at those who tell them the economy is bouncing back.”
