Where We Are Now

Abstract

The economy is statistically moving out of recession. This can be defined as the economy returning to its pre-recession levels. Of course, this doesn't tell how us any particular category is doing: domestic demand, labour and capital, income and occupational groups, or economic sectors such as industry, retail or finance. In this article we will take a tour of some of these sub-categories to see who is running ahead and who is lagging behind, who is winning and who is losing; in short, what kind of recovery are we experiencing. I will attempt to do this by taking a number of snapshots of various indicators and then put them together like a storyboard. This hopefully lays the ground for future research, giving pointers as to what to look out for. I will conclude by showing that, in fact, it may be much harder to figure out when we will exit the recession.