Apparently not, judging by the following report from the CBI via the FT.
Worst of recession over, says CBI
By Daniel Pimlott, Economics Reporter
That sounds good.
The bulk of the recession has already past, according to CBI forecasts, but a recovery is not expected to begin until the spring of 2010. Estimates by the employers’ group suggest the first quarter of this year was the worst period of the recession so far, with a 1.8 per cent decline in output compared with a 1.6 per cent fall in gross domestic product in the final quarter of last year and a 0.7 per cent drop in the third quarter.
But that brings the fall in output to 4 per cent so far, which is about four-fifths of the total 5.1 per cent fall in GDP that the CBI expects. “It is fair to say we are past the worst but it is too early to call this a recovery,” said Ian McCafferty, chief CBI economist.
Mr McCafferty said the “rate of contraction will moderate quite noticeably from the second quarter of this year” but forecast 2010 would see at best a fragile recovery that would not produce growth strong enough to reduce unemployment.
To summarise, the economy has still further to fall, there will be further unemployment and even if there is a pickup in economic output, there will be no pickup in employment in 2010, which means that there are some people who have still to lose their jobs who will still be unemployed at the start of 2011.
So how does that mean we are over the "worst"? Past the point of steepest decline in productivity, but not yet at the bottom. With that standard of analysis, can this report be taken seriously?
1 comment:
Nobody knows, they are all guessing on the basis of figures that too often are guesswork themselves, or based on out of date assumptions. Add to this the way in which too many statistics have been manipulated in recent years and it is all hocus pocus. What I do know it what is on the receipts of the shops I rely on for basic goods, they are all going up. All my household costs have gone up. Doubtless some thing may have gone down, but they do not mean much to the majority of the population, only the high spend high income end.
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