The Economy: Bad or Just OK?
The Wall Street Journal’s Real Time Economics blog has a roundup of economists’ reactions to the jobs numbers reported by the U.S. government this week. Overall the message can be summarized as: “don’t panic. It’s not a recession, although things have slowed.”
The housing market and subprime mortgage lenders are still having troubles, but according to the report:
“… [I]ncreases in services employment appeared to limit the risk of a severe economic downturn Nonfarm payrolls rose 94,000 in November, the Labor Department said Friday, down from October’s 170,000 gain. The unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.7%. Average hourly earnings increased $0.08, or 0.5%, to $17.63. However, that was up just 3.8% from a year earlier, suggesting that relatively tight labor markets are not putting much pressure on labor costs.”
The article goes on to give four economists’ reactions, all of which I’d summarize as cautiously and tepidly optimistic in the sense that they do not predict recession. Funny how our expectations get set, and we think it’s positive if people just say there’s not going to be a recession.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:02 pm
[…] About a month ago I wrote about the economic outlook in the U.S. as “cautiously and tepidly optimistic.” About the best you could say was that economists were avoiding predicting recession — so I guess you could call the outlook slightly positive as of early December 2007. […]