The Economy Can …
Can someone tell me what a recession is?
Seriously, please, someone explain it to me.
I mean, I get that technically a recession is two or more consecutive quarters of negative Gross Domestic Product growth, whatever that means. But when I think about a recession, when I’m chatting with friends at dinner parties about the economic crisis, I’m not thinking in terms of GDP or finances measured out in fiscal quarters. I’m thinking about me.
I’m thinking about my friends and family and their friends and families and our job security, bank balances, credit ratings, salaries, home values, access to jobs, and that gnawing terror that keeps us all up at night waiting for the bottom to fall out.
We don’t measure our lives by the fiscal quarter in relation to the GDP.
Still, I was excited to read yesterday that the Associated Press is reporting that 90 percent of economists say the recession will be over this year. Finally, some good news – a light at the end of this long, scary tunnel.
Then I did what the experts claim no online reader in his/her right mind would ever do: I read beyond the first paragraph of the story.
Sure the recession might be coming to a close, but the unemployment rate, the economists say, will continue to climb well into next year. That’s right, the recession will end, but we’ll see at least another year of job losses.
"Still," AP reports, "the forecasters believe the worst is already behind the country in terms of lost economic activity."
Lost economic activity? What does that mean? Come recession-end, possibly as soon as this summer, it’s back to business as usual in stock trading, overseas imports, and corporate greed run amuck while the rest of the country – nay, the whole of its population, sits home still wringing its hands and hemorrhaging jobs?
If that’s the case, let the recession rage on. What good is celebrating the end of the economic crisis if job losses, dwindling home values and the fear of a future in poverty continue?
And once we stop the bleeding, the real recession, the one that affects all of us at home, then what?
Recently I was talking with a former Circuit City employee of 15 years. Not only is she, like most of her colleagues, still trying to find a job in an increasingly competitive market, but she’s looking at positions that pay almost half of her former salary. Like thousands of Richmonders and millions of Americans, she is looking down the barrel of a bleak future. The unemployment checks are about to dry up (thanks Virginia legislature); the health insurance is gone; a job in her field now seems like a luxury; and any position she finds, if she’s lucky enough to find something full-time, caps out at around $30k a year.
But the recession is about to end, so goody for her, right?
Think again.
Call me cynical, but I think it’s unlikely that she, or anyone else downsized in this economy, will be restored to their former actually-able-to-support-myself-and-my-family salaries. And what happens after another year of job losses? Is there going to be a hiring boom? Are corporations going to open up the coffers and start creating jobs, or might they spend a year or two filling the coffers first?
When added all together, this recession-ending news is sounding less and less exciting. So thanks on the recession news, economists, but I think I’ll stay in my bunker a while longer.
What do you think, Richmond, is it good news that the recession is ending? What will this mean for jobs and your financial future? Karri Peifer is a Richmond.com staff writer and staunch supporter of all conservative viewpoints. The opinions she expresses so freely are hers; not those of Richmond.com or anyone affiliated with it. Or, really, of anyone who knows her.
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