“Expect the recovery to last for years, not a double-dip recession as some fear, says Jan Hatzius, chief economist at investment bank Goldman Sachs. But that’s not necessarily the good news.
“There’s still a long way to go. The unemployment rate is still 9 percent, we’re nowhere close to a really tight labor market that usually predicates a recession, so I think we’re still be in a recovery for a few years,” Hatzius told CNBC.
Unemployment is falling and growth will remain “above trend,” although the Fed is likely to keep steady on interest rates. Falling commodity prices also mean less short-term risk of a return to recession, he said.
A Gallup poll on May 2 found that 55 percent Americans think the United States is still in either a recession or a depression. Officially, the last recession ended in June 2009, nearly two years ago.
It’s cold comfort, perhaps, that the definition of recession according to the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is the moment when the economy bottoms and returns to expansion, even if that expansion is slow and uneven.”
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