Re: It's over !

["Devine, James" <jdevine@xxxxxxx>]

> I thought that a "recession" was a reduction in real GDP growth and a
> "depression" or "slump" negative real growth.

I think the IMF uses a reduction in real GDP growth to defined a world recession, but in the US, it's a reduction of real GDP _level_ for two quarters that is used (to summarize the NBER's more complicated definition). In the US, there's no official definition of "depression," while slump is often used as a synonym of recession. 
 
> As far as I know, real GDP growth without employment growth 
> is not new, this
> happened as well in some years in the 1980s or 1990s.

During the Bush-I years, we had a "jobless recovery," which we're seeing again under Bush-II, except that the recovery is pretty anemic outside the housing sector. It's a logical implication of Okun's "law" which says that real GDP has to increase about 2 1/2 to 3 percent per year to keep unemployment from rising. This is partly due to the normal increase in labor productivity and partly due to the normal increase of the labor force over time. 
 
Jim