NBER Announces Official End of Recession

Today, the National Bureau of Economic Research announced in a statement that the recession that began in December of 2007 had ended in June of 2009. After waiting for the release of the updated Gross National Income and Product Accounts (released in August of this year), it became clear that the recession had bottomed out in June of 2009.

Although this seems to be good news for the American economy, it was accompanied by a few important cautionary notes. The official end of the recession does not mean that the economy has since “returned to operating at normal capacity,” the NBER said. Furthermore, this official decision that the recession has ended means that any future recessionary economic activity must be considered a new, or double-dip, recession—which would indicate that the economy has indeed not returned to “business as usual."