Considering the unemployment rate, yes. Considering the stock market, no.
I believe that a recession is technically defined in terms of economic output. Not sure what the current statistics are on that, though I'd be surprised if they didn't indicate a recession.
It seems like we have 2 economies now. One that works, and one that doesn't. The one that works seems to be much more exclusive.
It's been that way for decades. Top two quintiles and deciles have been far outpacing the rest, who are basically flat or in decline. Last few years were a little bit better for them, but that came to an end of course.
It's not so much 2 economies as it's that we injected 2-4 Trillion dollars into the stock market to prop it up.
As of 2013, the top 1% of households owned 38% of stock market wealth. The top 10% own 81% of stock wealth.
There's an easy explanation for that. The stock that is driving the stock market boom is stuff that can replace "inefficiencies" in old school companies with massive scale and lots of cheap staff - Amazon being the best example. They, unlike classic retailers, are not bound by long term expensive rents and high amounts of (relatively) expensive staff, they can sell, even including delivery costs, much cheaper product - and for perishable goods they have the advantage that they can exactly steer demand with supply which means that unlike a traditional supermarket where people expect fresh groceries at 8 in the evening which leads to a LOT of waste due to reserves held across different locations in a city, they have one fulfillment center outside of the city that needs way less buffer.
Less than 50% of Americans have any stake in the stock market, which is a good reason we base economic forecasting on the behavior of GDP and not market indices.
Although if we were really smart we'd weigh financial services less, since that tips the scales upward when it isn't building as much value.
Was just about to say this. My equity funds are back to ≈85% before pandemic on average. One of them is better than before it. And that is coming from a very highly valued market due for a correction for years.
Whether we’re in a recession is not determined by stock prices. There were recessions before the stock market was invented.
Stock market =/= economy. I think a big part of the gains is that everyone is flush with cash with nowhere to invest since the interest rates are basically non-existant/negative.
The stock market isn't the economy right now, but in the long run it is meant to approximate the net present value of a big chunk of the economy.
Stocks are being buoyed by interventions from the Fed. There's a decoupling of the stock market and the economy. Those of us in Tech don't feel the pain much, but in the wider economy layoffs and pain are beginning to spread. Companies that took PPP money had to agree not to lay off people until the fall. Those stipulations end soon and there are large employers (airlines, banks, etc.) that have already announced that they'll have large layoffs in the next month or two. Add in small businesses that are going under (restaurants being hit hard, for example).
Many here are doing much better, because they invested in specific tech.