GDP fell .9% for the second quarterly decline and a strong signal of recession.

morning hard, while a few days ago they were pushing the inflation theme.

Those poor so-called financial analysts are so confused.

The fact is the fed is intentionally slowing down the economy.

Whether it will lead to a recession or not, no one really knows

Even notable bears Goldman Sachs is saying a recession is 50-50 in the next 2 years, and 30-70 against this year.

when employers made massive job cuts early on

I expect this time employers will try to hang onto workers for as long as possible because they are so hard to come by. But I am already reading about planned layoffs in tech and investment banking. The canaries in the coal mine.

What the pandemic did was cause a lot of people to finally retire. This "historic low" is that millions of people abandoned the job market.

There were 157.5 million jobs in 2019. Right now, we're sitting at 158.11 million. Not included? Population growth.

So that "Historic low!" is disguising a lot of the damage the pandemic did.

Mix in wage increases being utterly outpaced by inflation, and the economy is not great. People remain checked out and don't find the economy worthwhile enough to re-enter it.

There is going to be a lot of lipstick being applied to this pig. I get it. Election coming, etc. etc. People want to put the rosiest possible spin on everything.

Which is fine. Just as long as we're all aware that we're holding the lipstick and getting our Degas on.

(Edited to changed numbers, because I misread something)

Or in Kavanaugh's case, boofing beer and vodka (not that he needed a GDP decline to do that).

But pretending there is furthers the interests of the oligarchs who own the media.

workers and huge wage gains…workers with huge wage gains AND all working??!
A sad for the corporate media all round!

The business media is also not the workers friend!

Another annalist said raising int. rates is the std. way the Fed controls inflation, but it won't work this time because there are still problems with the supply chains & the war, neither will be fixed by int. rates. I hate to say it, but I don't believe there's much the Prez or the Fed can do except ride it out, & I'm afraid it will hurt the Dems in Nov. & maybe even 2024!

It's an indicator that the media is running out of things to hit Biden over the head with.

to fuel republican propaganda.

I wouldn't take this recession talk to seriously.

The housing market, especially new starts, is already being felt and will get worse. Also food shortages are on the horizon.

Per the NBER ( http://www.nber.org/cycles/recessions_faq.html ), recessions (contractions) begin at the peak of the economy and end at the trough (bottom) of the economy. And expansions (recoveries) begin at the trough of the economy and end at the peak of the economy.

One can see the recessions (the gray bands) beginning at about the point that unemployment is lowest in the business cycle.
https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating

(The NBER is the National Bureau of Economic Research, and has been the defacto arbiter of when recessions begin and end for many decades. They use a broader range of data than does the Bureau of Economic Analysis does -- the BEA is the agency that compiles the GDP reports like this morning's. Unfortunately, the NBER often takes a year or longer to call recessions and expansions.)

=======================================

As for why we're having GDP contraction (Q1 at -1.6% annualized, Q2 at -0.9% annualized), I guess supply chain disruptions, causing huge drops in productivity. This is from the latest BLS productivity report --

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/prod2.nr0.htm



I'm hoping the explanation is supply-chain, which has been easing.

It is possible that a tight labor side can be part of the economic output reduction as well.

To me, it doesn't feel like labor force nirvana when wages / salaries are not keeping up with inflation. And my life savings and fixed-dollar annuity is rapidly eroding in purchasing power.

...not with 2.8M jobs added just this year.

Unemployment at 3.6% and more than 1 million jobs created in the second quarter alone. Consumer spending is also continuing to grow, despite inflation.