I mean, just to lay out the simpleminded reasoning: corporations aren't going to go out and start hiring millions of people in *anticipation* of a better next quarter.

If economists don't know this, it seems like an example of book-learnin' getting in the way of some damn basic common sense.

If everyone lost their job on day one, then that would be the peak of jobless claims, but obviously would not be the end of the recession. Of course this is outrageously extreme, but in this case it is instructive. We previously watched the slow-motion loss of middle-class jobs that involve actually making things instead of providing services or manipulating capital. During the past one and one-half years we have seen enormous job losses as the manipulation of real-estate trough has been shown to be empty. The REAL unemployment (U6) is pushing towards 20%. Soon, most of the people who are losing their jobs will not bother to file for unemployment since they will be ineligible (one has to have worked in the previous 5 quarters to be eligible to receive any benefits).

Maybe the labor indicator of the end of this recession will be prosecutions of the underground economy. I know of many unemployed people who are staying afloat by working under the table in various otherwise legal and some explicitly illegal endeavors.

This is clearly a different type of recession/depression than we have seen in a long time. Japan came out of the "lost decade" by harnessing the U.S. consumer. How will we get out? Are we going to learn to make something for China and India? We don't even make things for ourselves.

Allow me to belabor the obvious one more time. Just as on 2002, there will be no job creation in the supposed 'recovery'. What few jobs might be created will pay less money than the jobs that were lost.

As it is presently structured the US economy is no longer capable of producing wealth for the middle class. Manufacturing continues to be off-shored or automated away. There is zero incentive

to raise wages in the service sector.

As I keep saying, absent significant structural changes the US middle class will continue to disappear. I have yet to hear or see any compelling evidence that contradicts that statement.

... any plausible suggestions about where the promised recovery is supposed to start.

In previous recessions, we still had businesses that employed lots of U.S. workers who re-hired the laid-off workers when things picked up. This time, we have a lot of jobs that were sent overseas and might never come back. Even if some businesses experience an improvement in sales, the improvement in hiring won't be as much as last time.

It also won't help if people who have savings suddenly start spending money. A lot of that money will promptly head overseas to pay for the foreign-made products.

So where, exactly, is this promised recovery going to start?

I heard something yesterday about "the government" saying that the recession was over. I don't see it, personally. I see a bottom, but no significant recovery. It will take a while (at least 6 months - more likely a year or more) before we start to see a real recovery. In the first place, the housing market has stabilized - at record lows. Until the foreclosed homes are sucked up then regular homes can't start to appreciate again. Inflation would help raise values but would create problems of its own. Unemployment is more stable, but still at record highs. A number of states, including our largest state, have major fiscal crises which will result in less spending.

I find it hard to believe that responsible economists are suggesting that we are actually in recovery. Bottoming out is not the same as "recovering".

First let me say that its as bad out there in the job market as any time in my 57 years adn its not showing any signs of life but then how can it.

Those jobs are gone, gleefully out sourced, downsized, and off shored to India and China. We don't DO anything in America anymore except consume well that and scoff at a need for an auto indistry so welcome to Burning Chrome

But remember with no credit cards and no home equity and no jobs there may not be many folks left to "consume"

In a year or so, we will look back in wonder at our wall street crack induced optimism about recovery when the only jobs involve a counter at Mickey Ds

& everyone laughed?

That was just the foothills.

Those jobs are gone, gleefully out sourced, downsized, and off shored to India and China.

The US has a marvelous economy. Unfortunately a lot of it is mostly located overseas.

The US isn't supposed to need those jobs. Americans are all supposed to get rich selling each other houses with money borrowed from the Chinese.

Americans have been had. Big time.

Isn't there going to have be an industry recovery FIRST?

More or less true. The end of a recession is usually marked by an increase in business investment. Guess what? Banks aren't lending much to businesses, so no increase in business investment.

Everybody turned into a bad credit risk overnight because the banksters know they've crapped out the real economy. By bleeding the real economy so badly they've ensured their own customers won't be able to repay new loans. That's why the banks aren't lending.

I mean, just to lay out the simpleminded reasoning: corporations aren't going to go out and start hiring millions of people in *anticipation* of a better next quarter.

Normally businesses get by on the people they have, or have laid off, in the early stages of a recovery, and add employees later. That's why employment numbers are normally a lagging indicator: employers don't hire until a recovery is already under way. And it's for reasons you have already surmised.

As discussed several days ago, unemployment is now a leading indicator as well. Things have to get really bad for that to happen.

If economists don't know this, it seems like an example of book-learnin' getting in the way of some damn basic common sense.

You don't need to be an overpaid economist to figure these things out. Like I said yesterday:

Economics, as practiced by corporatists, is not a science precisely because it does not follow facts and reason, fakes a lot its data, is not self-correcting, and creates self-serving rationalizations rather than valid explanations. It is very much a charade perpetuated to deceive rather than to enlighten for the purpose of "justifying" the financial scams of economic predators on Wall St. and in DC.

This is why economics is so often unable to provide useful predictions. Economics in general lacks that predictive power which is typical of real sciences like biology or physics. Economics has made very little real progress since Adam Smith's day.

If forecasters are "surprised" it is only because they have deluded themselves into actually believing that their forecasting models have more than a casual basis in reality, when it should be obvious that they are very purposefully flawed. That so many would complain that "everything's unexpected" amounts to a confession that corporatist economics cannot be anything a sham, possessing only enough truth to make it seem plausible.

You're better off using common sense and assuming the utterances of corporate economists are bald-faced lies unless corroborated independently. That includes any economist authorized to speak for the government, because without exception they're shills placed there by Wall St.

Even right-wingers like the second-class predators on Daily Reckoning will assure you that Geithner and Bernanke are so full of it you have to wonder why they don't leak. Presently the government is operating only for the benefit of the first-class predators from the big banks and Wall St. All others are not invited to the party. That's why a lot of conservatives are just as POed as the libruls.