Thanks for John Berry's July 11 Business story, "Number Crunchers vs. Recession," which pointed out that the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) has added a new indicator -- monthly real gross domestic product -- and assigned greater weight to GDP estimates in determining when the end of the recession may be reached.
When I looked up the latest NBER analysis and compared it with the one issued two months earlier, I found that the committee had downgraded its emphasis on employment statistics even more than Mr. Berry's story indicated.
In April the committee wrote: "Economy-wide employment and real personal income are the most important monthly indicators . . . employment is probably the single most reliable indicator."
But in July the statement ranked employment behind income. The committee's membership is the same as it was in April, so it appears that it has experienced a remarkable paradigm shift in its analytical processes.
Perhaps these seven economists have convinced themselves that a jobless recovery can be called a recovery, but I doubt that they will be able to convince America's workers and job-seekers.
Well, to call this a recovery is "techically accurate," right Cornelia?