Why It Still Feels Like Recession To 95% Of America [View all]

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http://www.businessinsider.com/why-it-still-feels-like-a-recession-to-95-of-america-2013-8

If you want to claim the 2008 recession ended, you have to find a metric that reflects "growth." For instance, gross domestic product (GDP), which has expanded since 2009.



But as Lance Roberts, Gordon T. Long and I discuss in Is the US in a Recession?(43 min. video, 52 slides), this metric of "growth" is suspect on a number of counts. For example, does this chart of full-time employees relative to the population look expansionary?



Or how about this chart of median household income, which adjusted for inflation isdown 7.2%?



Or how about real personal income less government personal transfers on a 5-year basis (the red line)? Notice that the red line only popped briefly above 0% into "growth" in late 2012 as those who could declared income in 2012 before the 1013 tax increases kicked in.