business

WASHINGTON - It's about to become official: The recession is over -- but not the pain.

Government figures being released this week are expected to show that the economy has awakened from its deepest slump since the 1930s and is in the early stages of recovery. But the following week, the government will issue another set of figures expected to show unemployment continuing to rise toward and possibly above a clearly recessionary 10 percent.

How can both be possible?

The government releases third-quarter gross domestic product figures on Thursday. Many forecasters say they will show GDP growing at an annual rate of about 3 percent, validating a widely held belief among economists that the recession ended in June or July.

But try telling that to the more than 15 million still unemployed, the small businesses and individuals who can't get loans and the people whose homes are worth less than their mortgages.

Assertions by government and private economists that the recession is over -- issued amid graphic examples of continuing wide distress -- are raising fresh questions about economic scorekeeping.

The national recession may be technically over, but the state of the economy remains in the eyes of the beholder.

As Ronald Reagan liked to say, a recession is when your neighbor loses his or her job. Depression is when you lose yours.

A survey of economic forecasters prepared by Blue Chip Economic Indicators, a research organization, predicted that GDP growth will remain positive in each quarter through the end of 2010. In a survey by the National Association of Business Economics, 34 of 43 economists polled said the recession is over.

"From a technical perspective, the recession is very likely over," said Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke.

"A recession that showed no signs of ending last January appears to be firmly entering the recovery phase," said Christina Romer, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers.

But nobody is sugar-coating the statistics, especially in the administration, which agrees with private surveys suggesting that unemployment will hover near 10 percent through most of next year. "Even when you've turned the corner, you have so much work to do," Romer told Congress' Joint Economics Committee.

And while she credited much of the turnabout to government stimulus measures and moves by the Federal Reserve, she said "by mid-2010, fiscal stimulus will be contributing little to further growth."

Even ahead of the report expected to show an increase in economic growth, the Conference Board, a private Chicago-based research group, reported Tuesday that consumers' confidence about the U.S. economy fell unexpectedly in October as job prospects remained bleak.

The economy has lost 7.2 million jobs since the recession began in December 2007, 3.4 million of them since President Obama took office.

Economists are referees

A recession is popularly defined as two or more consecutive quarters of negative economic growth, or declining output. But a more refined determination is made by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a private group of leading economists charged with dating the start and end of economic downturns. It not only looks at GDP but at employment levels, personal income, industrial production and wholesale and retail sales.

It put the start date at December 2007 and has not yet called an end.

Economists suggest that some of the expected increase in economic growth is a bounce off the bottom. They attribute it to government stimulus spending, accommodative Fed monetary policies and widespread cost-cutting by companies.

Many companies let inventories run down so much that when they ran out, orders picked up. Home resales ticked up as buyers scrambled to complete their purchases before a tax credit for first-time owners expires. And U.S. exporters have benefited from a relentless decline of the dollar that has made U.S. goods cheaper overseas.

But none of this adds up to a sustainable upswing.

"Absent robust job growth, it is not a true economic recovery," said White House economic adviser Jared Bernstein.