Sunday, May 10, 2009

White house states no job growth till at least 2010

Speaking on C-SPAN, Christina Romer, chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said that she expected the G.D.P. to begin growing in the fourth quarter of this year. Romer mentioned that she also doesn’t expect job growth until after the economy starts recovering. Job growth is a latent event on economic activity. Romer stated that, “unfortunately pretty realistic” that the unemployment rate could reach 9.5 percent. A sensible estimate for the G.D.P.’s expansion rate in 2010, she said, is 3%.
Christina Romer is a very important person to follow in this economic decline. Her recommendations to President Obama are taken more serious than most economists because of her background research in the great depression.
Based on figures released on May 8th 2009, the unemployment rate in April was 8.9 percent, the largest level in 25 years. The underemployment rate, which counts people who are working part time because their hours have been cut and those who have given up looking for jobs, reached 15.8 percent.
Romer recently mentioned in late April that the rate of inventory liquidation in the first quarter suggests that factories will soon have to begin producing again. Romer believed the White House may "ultimately be vindicated" in its economic forecast for the year, which is rosier than the Congressional Budget Office estimates on growth. Romer questioned recent IMF estimates over the losses that U.S. banks will suffer. Romer's comments came in testimony before the joint Economic Committee of Congress.