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not a destination

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Blog Posts
 

The Current US Economy in Pictures

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here are 9,694 words about the economy. (Don't worry 9,000 words are from pictures)

At a recent meeting I was given a collection of market insights from J.P. Morgan Asset Management that I thought was so good, I have now signed up for their quarterly report. The first quarter 2011 edition is packed with nearly 60 pages of charts and graphs literally dissecting the financial markets and relevant information from various perspectives. Focusing solely on the economy here are some of the first things that caught my attention.

The media has drawn a lot of parallels about our most recent financial crisis and the Great Depression of 1929 – 1933. But is the comparison valid? Take a look at this:

Each bubble represents a recession plotted along the timeline at the bottom. The size of the bubble indicates the impact the recession had on GDP. From this graph, it is easy to see that during the Great Depression, the economy declined by more than a quarter, while during the most recent recession GDP declined by only 4.1%. The height of each bubble exemplifies the length of the recession. The Great Depression lasted nearly 4 years. The most recent recession did not last two years. Looking at this graph the most recent recession looks more like the recession of the early 1970's, not the Great Depression.

I remember the 1970's recession, but only how my parents talked about it (although I remember the gas lines!). I certainly was not working with clients. But this recession seems to be surrounded by more fear than I ever remember. In fact, I surprise a lot of clients when I refer to the recession in the past tense. Many clients still believe the economy is in a tail spin, but that is not the case.

The data tells us that the economy has been growing since late 2009. Based on the historical average growth of 2.5%, recent economic numbers suggest the economy is back to "normal". In fact, in terms of economic impact we lost $554 billion of economic output during the recession and have gained $469 billion since it ended. The US economy, as a whole, is almost back to where it was before the crisis. But that does not mean everything is exactly as it was. Our houses are still way down from the peak.

But that does make home ownership more affordable than it has been in over 35 years.

And unemployment is still way above the average.

Even though we know the number has improved since the end of 2010, this is still a major issue. First of all notice that in the 1980's unemployment was higher, but there was a sharp increase followed by an equally dramatic decline. This time the decline does not to appear to be as rapid as the spike. I fear that it may actually be worse because of the definitions the government uses when compiling unemployment data. To be considered unemployed, you must actually be looking for work. If someone is not working but has given up trying to find a job, we don't count them as unemployed. So even though the unemployment numbers are improving, I would not be surprised to see a setback in the months ahead as more jobs are created and unemployed workers decide to start looking for work again. A better indicator may be the raw number of jobs created.

We lost 8.5 million jobs during the recession and have only gained back 1.2 million since. For the recovery to be sustainable, we will need jobs.

In spite of this, I am quite optimistic. The economy depends on the consumer. Over 70% of GDP is consumption.

Because of our fear, regardless of if we have been afraid to lose our jobs or we are too dependent on debt, the consumer is more stable today than we were at the beginning of the recession. Savings rates are on the rise

And we are using less of our income to service debt.

So we, as consumers, are well positioned to keep the economy growing.