While there are around 15 million unemployed workers, there are also around 9 million workers who are working part time for economic reasons (as opposed to their own choice), and around 1.3 million “discouraged” workers who want a job but who are not currently actively looking for work – and therefore are not counted as unemployed. As firms decide to increase their total hours, some of this additional labor demand will take the form of firms restoring part-time workers to full-time status – an action that does not reduce the unemployment rate. In addition, as conditions begin to improve in the labor market, discouraged workers may decide to reenter the labor force and to renew their search for a job. This reentry pushes up the measured unemployment rate until these reentrants find new employment. As the recession ended, consumption growth returned to positive, supported by improvement in disposable income growth and a leveling off of the household saving rate (Chart 20). Household wealth began to recover as equity markets improved and the deterioration in house prices abated, supported in part by demand created by the housing tax credit programs (Chart 21). As conditions in financial markets improved, banks ceased tightening their lending standards (Chart 22). Lending activity stopped contracting, and credit became more readily available for large firms that had access to the credit markets (Chart 23). Midway through 2010, however, questions started to arise as to whether the economy was entering a “soft-patch” or heading toward a “double-dip” recession.
Joseph S Tracy: A strategy for the 2011 economic recovery Remarks by Mr Joseph S Tracy, Executive Vice President of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, at Dominican College, Orangeburg, New York, 28 January 2011. *  *  *  Good morning. It is a pleasure to be with you this morning to look back on the tremendous events impacting the economy over the past several years, and to assess the outlook for the economy going forward. Let me note that the views that I will discuss with you are my own and not necessarily those of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York or the Federal Reserve System. On September 20, 2010, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determined that the “Great Recession” officially ended in June 2009. The Great Recession did not earn its moniker due to its length. At 18 months, the length of the Great Recession was only slightly longer than the average of 17.5 months for the 33 recessions tracked by the NBER since 1857. In fact, the longest recession was 65 months and lasted from October 1873 to March 1879. The Great Recession distinguished itself from earlier recessions in terms of its severity rather than its length. There was a decline in real output relative to trend of $ trillion or 8 percent (Chart 1). This contraction brought the level of real output back to its level in 2006. In most recessions, consumption growth slows but remains positive.