Lenon’s main business news

Japan posted a current-account surplus in January as exports climbed for a second month, an indication overseas demand is sustaining the nation’s recovery.

The gap was 899.8 billion yen ($9.9 billion) from a year earlier, when it was deficit, the Ministry of Finance said in Tokyo today. The median estimate of 26 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News was for a 783.9 billion yen surplus.

The report highlights the role overseas shipments have continued to play in propping up the world’s second-largest economy. Further export gains in coming months will prompt businesses to boost spending on plant and equipment, helping support the rebound, according to economist Naoki Iizuka.

“Right now the economy is being pulled by exports and inventory adjustments,” Iizuka, a senior economist at Mizuho Securities Co. in Tokyo, said before the report was released. “Once we enter the second quarter, manufacturers’ capital spending will be a new contributor to the economy’s growth.”

Today’s data adds to signs of sustained expansion in the first quarter. Factory production rose at the fastest pace since May and the unemployment rate fell to a 10-month low in January. The Finance Ministry said last week capital spending also fell 18.5 percent in the three months ended Dec. 31. While that was the 11th straight decline, it was also the smallest drop in a year.

Shipments to China rose at the fastest pace since 1985 in January, while exports to the U.S. advanced for the first time in more than two years, customs-cleared trade data showed last month. Today’s figures don’t include regional breakdowns.

Favorable Comparison

The export rebound has been driven in part by favorable year-on-year comparisons. Shipments had plunged last year in the wake of a global credit crunch caused by the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Japan posted its first current-account deficit in 13 years in January 2009 as a result.

Overseas shipments of Nissan Motor Co. cars rose 29.6 percent in January, while Mitsubishi Motor Corp. shipped more than double the amount of vehicles compared with the same month a year ago, according to the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association.

The Cabinet Office will say the economy expanded at a revised 4 percent annualized pace last quarter, according to the median estimate of 27 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Preliminary figures showed 4.6 percent growth. The report is due on March 11 at 8:50 a.m. in Tokyo.

The current account tracks the flow of goods, services and investment income between Japan and its trading partners. It includes trade not shown in the customs-cleared balance.

Source

Life insurance quotes from affordable life insurance companies. Life insurance agents, life insurance guides, life insurance articles.

Europe’s recovery almost came to a halt in the fourth quarter of 2009 as companies continued to cut investment while consumers held back spending, countering a gain in exports.

Corporate investment dropped 0.8 percent from the third quarter, when it fell 0.9 percent, while household spending was flat, the European Union’s statistics office in Luxembourg said today. Exports gained 1.7 percent and imports rose 0.9 percent. Gross domestic product rose 0.1 percent from the third quarter, when it increased 0.4 percent.

European governments are struggling to contain the fallout from Greece’s budget crisis as they phase out the stimulus measures used to pull the economy out of a recession. Economic confidence in the region fell last month and unemployment held at an 11-year high in January. Still, the EU forecasts growth will accelerate in the first quarter.

“Today’s figures clearly demonstrate that the euro-region recovery is still very much made abroad and that private domestic demand has yet to recover,” said Martin Van Vliet, an economist at ING Group in Amsterdam. “We suspect that first- quarter growth might only be slightly better than the fourth quarter’s meager performance.”

The euro pared declines against the dollar after the data, trading at $1.3681 at 12:33 p.m. in London, down 0.1 percent on the day. The yield on the German 10-year benchmark bond rose 0.1 basis point to 3.14 percent.

Government Spending

From a year earlier, euro-area GDP declined a seasonally adjusted 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter, the statistics office said today, confirming an initial estimate from Feb. 12. Government spending fell 0.1 percent from the third quarter, when it increased 0.8 percent, today’s report showed.

For the full year, GDP shrank 4.1 percent, compared with an earlier estimate of 4 percent. That compares with contractions of 2.4 percent in the U.S. and 5 percent in Japan last year, the statistics office said.

The German economy, Europe’s largest, stagnated in the fourth quarter after recording 0.7 percent growth in the previous three months, while Italian GDP fell 0.2 percent. France’s economic expansion accelerated to 0.6 percent from 0.2 percent. In Greece, the economy contracted 0.8 percent in the fourth quarter.

European companies are relying on exports to bolster sales as households in the region cut back spending. Consumer and executive confidence in the outlook worsened in February after unemployment held at 9.9 percent in January, the highest since November 1998.

European Environment

Carrefour SA Chief Executive Officer Lars Olofsson said on Feb. 19 that he doesn’t “see any change in the European environment for the next six months at least” after Europe’s largest retailer reported a 70 percent drop in 2009 profit free credit score.

The European Central Bank will probably keep its benchmark interest rate at 1 percent today, according to a Bloomberg survey. The ECB, which has started to phase out some of its stimulus measures introduced to fight the recession, will release its decision at 1:45 p.m. in Frankfurt.

“The phasing out of some unconventional measures should not be misinterpreted as a desire to remove policy accommodation,” ECB council member Athanasios Orphanides said in an interview on Feb. 12. “Policy accommodation continues to be needed in light of the very subdued inflation outlook and the unevenness and weakness of the economy.”

EU Forecasts

While euro-region GDP is seen rising 0.2 percent in the current quarter from the previous three months, the economy may fail to gather strength for most of 2010, according to EU forecasts on Feb. 25. In the year, the economy will probably expand 0.7 percent after shrinking 4 percent in 2009, the EU projects.

Europe’s governments face a growing dilemma as they seek to bolster recoveries at a time when rising sovereign-debt burdens threaten to hobble economic expansion. The euro has declined 8.1 percent against the dollar over the past three months amid concern Greece’s budget crisis will spread to other countries.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou’s government yesterday approved an additional 4.8 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in deficit cuts after EU officials said the nation’s financial woes pose a threat to the entire region. The country, which has pledged to lower the budget gap beneath the EU limit of 3 percent of GDP by 2012, today started a sale of 10-year bonds amid street protests in Athens against the cuts.

‘Slow and Patchy’

“The recovery in the euro-area economy as a whole in 2010 will be slow and patchy,” said Colin Ellis, an economist at Daiwa Securities in London. “It is hard to see a strong engine of domestic growth in the euro-area economy, consistent with our view that exports may have to do the heavy lifting.”

While the euro’s slide against the dollar is boosting some raw-materials costs for companies, it’s also improving the competitiveness of European exports just as the global economy gathers strength. Europe’s service and manufacturing industries expanded for a seventh month in February.

Volkswagen AG, Europe’s largest carmaker, is facing a “strong headwind” in Europe and a “tailwind” in the U.S. and China, CEO Martin Winterkorn said on March 1. BASF SE, the world’s biggest chemical company, last month forecast higher earnings this year.

Source

Get up to $1500 with an fast cash loans in less than 1 hour - 100% online.

Marriott International Inc. has signed a management contract with Salt River Devco, a development company run by the Salt River Pima-Maricopa Indian Community in Arizona, to operate a Courtyard by Marriott-branded hotel on reservation property.

It is Marriott’s first hotel on U.S. tribal land. It is located just outside of Scottsdale, Ariz.

The hotel, owned by Salt River Devco, is part of a 108-acre development it manages which currently includes six commercial buildings with plans for eight more.

“It is a great example of Marriott’s diverse ownership program, which currently has more than 500 diverse-owned hotels,” said Eric Jacobs, senior vice president of lodging development for Marriott cash advance to savings account.

The 156-room hotel is scheduled to open in 2012. Courtyard is Marriott’s (NYSE: MAR) largest brand, with 860 properties now and another 150 in development.

Source

The U.K.’s unemployment rate would be almost double and its recession would have been deeper if Britain had joined the euro, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.

Gross domestic product would have contracted 7 percent last year and unemployment would currently be 15 percent if the nation had signed up to the single currency, CEBR’s Chief Executive Officer Douglas McWilliams said today in an e-mailed statement. The economy shrank 4.8 percent last year.

At 7.8 percent, the U.K. jobless rate is below that of the U.S. and the average of the euro region, which are both at 10 percent. Prime Minister Gordon Brown decided to keep Britain out of the European single currency when he was finance minister in 2003 after an assessment of the potential benefits of joining. Many euro members have struggled, McWilliams said personal business card.

“Most European economies have found keeping up with a German-inspired exchange rate a problem,” he said. “For those European countries that have a propensity to borrow, a single interest rate, kept low by frugal Germany, was a step too far and they over borrowed. Ireland and Spain are the most spectacular examples, but Portugal and Greece also had interest rates that were far too low for their economic circumstances.”

If the U.K. had joined the euro in 1998, economic growth would have been “slightly higher” and inflation would have been faster by about 0.6 percent through 2006, McWilliams said.

Source

Spain’s unemployment rate, the highest in the euro region, rose more than economists expected in the fourth quarter, threatening to delay recovery from the worst recession in six decades.

The jobless rate rose to 18.8 percent from 17.9 percent in the previous quarter, the National Statistics Institute said today in an e-mailed statement. The active population fell as immigrants left the labor market. The rate had been expected to climb to 18.5 percent, according to a Bloomberg News survey of five economists.

Reeling from the collapse of a debt-fueled construction boom as well as the global crisis, Spain’s unemployment rate has more than doubled in two years and joblessness among young people has surged beyond 40 percent. The greatest job losses in the euro region are eroding support for the Socialist government of Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, re-elected in 2008 on pledges of full employment, even after his stimulus programs put more than 400,000 people back to work.

“This is going to make the recovery more difficult,” said Estefania Ponte, an economist at Fortis Bank in Madrid. “The most important factor for private consumption is the labor market, and if there’s no improvement in the labor market, it’s very difficult for consumption to recover.”

Construction Workers

About half a million construction workers joined the jobless ranks in the two years to December as the decade-long building boom came to an end, Labor Ministry data show. Ford Motor Co. announced 600 job cuts last year in Spain, once the motor of job creation in the euro region, and olive-oil bottler SOS Corporacion Alimentaria SA also reported plans for layoffs.

The government’s 8 billion-euro ($11.2 billion) works program, which employed builders to widen sidewalks and install cycle routes, ended last month and is being replaced this year with a program half its size. Monthly jobless figures for January will be published on Feb. 2.

“It’s quite a risk,” said Giada Giani, an economist at Citigroup Global Markets in London, who expects unemployment to reach 20 percent this year. “With no pickup in employment, wages slowing and inflation picking up, the overall impact on real disposable incomes for households is likely to be felt more in 2010 than last year.”

People’s Party Gains

The opposition People’s Party extended its lead over the ruling Socialists and would win 43.6 percent of the vote if elections were held now, a poll published in El Mundo newspaper showed on Jan. 2. Unemployment is Spaniards’ main concern, according to the latest survey from the state-run Center for Sociological Research.

While the International Monetary Fund expects the 16-nation euro area, the U.S. and the U.K. to expand this year, it forecasts Spain will contract 0.6 percent in 2010. The budget deficit probably grew to 11.2 percent of economic output in 2009, according to a European Commission forecast, as job losses mounted and the government extended benefits for the long-term unemployed.

The Cabinet today plans to discuss spending cuts of as much as 50 billion euros by 2013, the deadline set by the commission to bring the shortfall within the EU’s 3 percent limit, said an official at the prime minister’s office who declined to be named in line with policy.

Source

OTTAWA–The good old days of booming economic growth are not coming back in the years ahead, Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney warned in a gloomy assessment of the long-term strength of the Canadian economy.

Economic growth, which achieved a robust average rate of nearly 3.5 per cent in the late 1990s and early 2000s, won’t be much greater than 2 per cent beyond 2011, Carney said Thursday.

He put it down to an aging workforce and low growth in productivity, a measure of worker output that determines a society’s standard of living.

"Until we see evidence of an uptick in productivity, at least at this stage, looking for growth – real growth – much north of 2 per cent is not yet a realistic prospect," Carney told reporters after releasing the central bank’s quarterly outlook. "We have a productivity performance that has been relatively disappointing in recent years."

Economists said this means that, over the long term, Canadians will face declining living standards, reduced household incomes and mediocre employment prospects.

United Steelworkers economist Erin Weir said Carney’s long-term growth forecast will probably not be enough to significantly reduce unemployment, now running at 8.5 per cent.

"You’ve got this stock of unemployed workers and the bank is projecting enough economic growth to employ what you might call the new flow of workers into the labour market each year," he said. "But the bank is not actually projecting enough economic growth to bring down that stock of unemployed."

In the short term, Carney was cautiously optimistic, saying a global recovery is underway and economic and financial developments have been "slightly more favourable" than the central bank expected in its October report.

Economic output in Canada contracted by 2.5 per cent in 2009. But the country will return to growth of 2.9 per cent this year and 3 fast cash now.5 per cent in 2011, Carney said. Quarterly growth will begin to drop to the 2-per-cent range in the second half of 2011 and stay that way into the foreseeable future, Carney noted.

Carney gave no indication that the bank will stray from its commitment to maintain its key overnight rate at the current 0.25 per cent until mid-2010. Carney repeated that, barring a burst of inflation, he would maintain the record-low rate to spur economic activity and offset the recession.

But even his relatively upbeat forecast for 2010 was hedged with uncertainties. The higher-valued Canadian dollar and the possibility that the global recession will linger longer than expected are raising questions about the strength of the recovery, the bank said.

"There is a risk that persistent strength of the Canadian dollar could act as a significant further drag on growth," according to the quarterly Monetary Policy Report.

"Another important downside risk is that the global recovery could be even more protracted than projected."

The Canadian dollar, which has been trading in the 95-cent (U.S.) range on exchange markets, has climbed steadily over the past two years. As the loonie rises, it makes it harder for Canadian exporters to compete abroad, particularly in the key United States market.

The central bank said global economic growth will pick up over the next two years as the recovery takes hold, but the rebound in advanced industrial nations will be moderate.

In the U.S., the recovery will remain relatively weak, the bank said, although it predicted it would be a bit better than forecast due to stronger-than-expected growth in domestic consumption and exports. Carney forecast U.S. growth this year at 2.5 per cent, up from the 1.8 per cent predicted in October.

Source

Canadian media luminaries Jerry Grafstein, Raymond Heard and Beryl Wajsman announced today they are leading a consortium of local investors to acquire Montreal’s The Gazette, The Ottawa Citizen and The National Post.

The group is in the process of filing a bid to buy the three dailies Canwest LP, a division of Canwest Global Communications Corp. The partners hope to be able to begin due diligence on the operating data in the next few weeks.

The consortium partners have received strong financial commitments from unspecified sources. They said additional participants in the consortium will be announced shortly.

“Our partnership represents a cross spectrum of engaged Canadians committed to a vigorous, independent media voice for the communities that each newspaper serves. We are encouraged by the positive response we have received from investors,” the three consortium partners said. “We are firm in our view that there remains a bright future for newspapers supported by creative web platforms.”

The offer may face an uphill battle. The papers are part of a larger chain of 11 publications, which is currently operating under bankruptcy court protection from creditors. The chain is being offered for sale as an intact group, not as individual publications.

The founding family, headed by Leonard Asper, chief executive officer of Canwest Global, has indicated it wants to keep the papers together. Asper has noted in a pre-filing letter that the newspaper chain and another Canwest property, the Global television network, benefit financially from being able to sell joint advertising space to major national advertisers.

As well, the newspaper group would somehow have to improve on the offer Canwest already has on hand from its secured creditors, led by Canada’s major banks. The creditors say they will pay $950 million for the chain, the amount they are owed by Canwest LP.

But the media consortium said today it believes the newspapers would benefit from local involvement that would produce timely, informative, well-written stories and grassroots journalism reflecting the priorities of Canada’s diverse communities. Each newspaper has a loyal and interested readership, which the consortium said it is confident can be broadened and deepened.

Grafstein is a former Senator and founder of CITY-TV in Toronto and other electronic and print enterprises in Canada, the U.S., Europe and Latin America. He retired from the Senate when he turned 75 — the mandatory retirement age — on Jan. 2.

Heard, a media consultant with major corporate clients, was White House correspondent and Managing Editor of the Montreal Star, editor of the London Observer News Service, and head of Global TV News, which is also owned by Canwest.

Wajsman, is editor of Quebec’s largest English-language weekly, publisher of the bilingual journal of political commentary, The Metropolitan, and was the producer and host of a Montreal radio news magazine program.

Source

European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet intensified pressure on Greece to cut the continent’s biggest budget deficit with a warning that the country won’t get any favors from policy makers.

As Prime Minister George Papandreou struggles to convince investors and European Union governments he can regain control of the country’s budget, Trichet yesterday said no nation can expect any “special treatment.”

“The central bank has clearly chosen to maintain its pressure on the Greek government, rather than easing the heightened tensions in bond markets,” said Laurent Bilke, a former ECB economist now at Nomura International Plc in London.

Greek bonds extended declines after Trichet’s comments, which came after the ECB left its benchmark interest rate at a record low of 1 percent. While Greece was his main target, Trichet told other euro members to take the “difficult decisions” needed to tackle “sharply rising” budget gaps or face higher borrowing costs that hurt economic growth.

The Greek remarks eclipsed those made on monetary policy as officials turn their attention from the financial crisis to the nations most hurt by the recession. German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in comments published yesterday that Greece’s fiscal woes could hurt the euro and Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean- Claude Juncker said International Monetary Fund aid wouldn’t be “appropriate.”

Collateral

Rating downgrades sparked a rout in Greece’s bonds in December as investors tuned into a budget deficit of 12.7 percent of gross domestic product, more than four times the European Union limit. The yield on the 2-year Greek note today rose 6 basis points to 3.559 percent, extending yesterday’s gain of 44 points.

Arguing that it has received enough of a benefit from euro membership, Trichet said the ECB won’t help Greece by delaying the reintroduction of its pre-crisis collateral rules at the end of 2010. Downgrades by Fitch Ratings, Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s have fanned concerns its bonds will be excluded from the ECB’s market operations.

“We will not change our collateral policy for the sake of any particular country,” Trichet said.

The subsequent selloff suggests the market “still harbors hopes that the ECB would abort its collateral decision,” said Elga Bartsch, chief European economist at Morgan Stanley in London guaranteed high risk personal loans. Juergen Michels, chief euro-area economist at Citigroup Inc., said the ECB will ultimately agree to rules “that do not put too much additional pressure on member countries.”

Short Shrift

Trichet also downplayed the importance of Greece for the euro region as a whole. While Greece makes up about 3 percent of the bloc’s GDP, 13 percent of the U.S. economy is accounted for by California, which is also suffering financial difficulties.

Those remarks drew short shift from Andrew Bosomworth, a former ECB economist and now head of portfolio management at Pacific Investment Management Co. in Munich. He warned Greece could still cause “contagion” to other economies with poor finances such as Portugal or Spain.

“While each of those countries in their own right may not be very big, or a threat to the euro area, if one of them were to go you have potential domino effect that could snowball into a big problem for the euro area,” Bosomworth said in a television interview yesterday.

Marco Annunziata, chief economist at UniCredit Group in London, said policy makers are playing a “nerve-wracking game of chicken” in the hope that their tough rhetoric will pressure Greece into action.

Budget Shortfall

“If a rescue turns out to be necessary, a rescue operation will be mounted,” Annunziata said.

In Athens, Papandreou yesterday pledged to “do whatever it takes” to rein in the budget shortfall and restore confidence in the country’s finances when he published the three-year budget plan.

The government’s latest proposals, to be presented to the European Commission today, call for about 10 billion euros ($14 billion) of spending cuts and revenue increases this year to bring the shortfall from 12.7 percent of output to 8.7 percent by year-end.

“Our country can and is obliged to exit as soon as possible this vicious circle of misery,” Papandreou said. “We will not retreat; we will proceed quickly.”

Source

The 2010 census couldn’t have come at a better time for the U.S. economy.

The government will hire about 1.2 million temporary workers in the first half of the year to administer the decennial population count, possibly providing a bridge to gains in private employment later in the year.

The surge will probably dwarf any hiring by private employers early in 2010 as companies delay adding staff until they are convinced the economic recovery will be sustained. Money earned by the clipboard-toting workers going door-to-door to verify the government population survey is likely to be spent, giving the economy an extra lift.

“It’s a short-term stimulus program in which the government’s injecting money into the economy through additional paychecks,” said Dean Maki, chief U.S. economist at Barclays Capital Inc. in New York, who projects that 2.5 million more Americans will be working at the end of the year. “This will support consumer income during those months.”

Payrolls unexpectedly fell 85,000 last month, a Labor Department report showed today, and revisions showed they increased by 4,000 in November, the first gain in almost two years. Service industries, which include banks, insurance companies, restaurants and retailers, subtracted 4,000 workers after adding 62,000 the previous month.

The economy will add 1.1 million jobs by the end of the year, according to the consensus estimate in a survey last month by Blue Chip Economic Indicators.

“We have the strongest increases in the second half of the year,” said Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Massachusetts, referring to the firm’s forecast for hiring to grow by 800,000 this year.

Third Quarter

Economists’ payroll estimates for the year exclude the census numbers since the jobs created are temporary, with most disappearing by the end of the third quarter and the rest gone by December.

The stimulus bill President Barack Obama signed in February and additional funding by Congress provided enough money to hire 1.4 million Americans in total for the census, almost three times as many as in 2000 easy online payday loans. About 160,000 were already employed last year to do preliminary work.

The Census Bureau anticipates hiring about 181,000 workers from January through March and about 971,000 in the following three months.

First Five Months

The economy may add about 700,000 jobs in May alone, mostly because of the census, Gault said. Even Maki’s more optimistic assessment of the employment outlook means the U.S. may take years to recover the 7.2 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.

“The bulk of these employees are from the low end of the income distribution; they are cash-constrained,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York who forecasts the economy will add a little more than 1 million jobs this year. “Having a paycheck is allowing them to spend in a way that they wouldn’t otherwise.”

Hiring for the census may also help lower the unemployment rate early this year, economists said, though the influence will be less than in payrolls. For example, some of the people hired may have other part-time jobs, limiting the impact on joblessness.

By the end of the year the jobless rate will fall to 9.7 percent, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. The unemployment in December held at 10 percent.

Optimistic Outlook

Bruce Kasman, chief economist at JPMorgan Chase & Co. in New York, is among those optimistic about the outlook for jobs early in the year with or without the help from the census.

“We think it’s going to ramp up pretty quickly,” he said. Kasman forecasts the economy will create more than 2 million jobs this year.

Other economists anticipate a labor market weakness will persist through the next six months, even taking into account the census hiring.

“The labor market will effectively be stalled through the first half of 2010,” said James Shugg, a senior economist at Westpac Banking Corp. in London.

Source

Some of the economists who anticipated the U.S. job market would see marked improvement in November now project job gains are around the corner, and possibly in the rearview mirror.

Payrolls fell by 11,000 workers, while the unemployment rate dropped to 10 percent. Jobs were forecast to decline 125,000, according to the median estimate of 82 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News. Estimates ranged from decreases of 30,000 to 180,000.

The drawdown in inventories and rising corporate profits are the most compelling reasons for payrolls to begin showing sustainable increases as soon as this month, these economists said. What’s more, the recent trend of upward revisions will probably continue, signaling the worst employment slump in the postwar era may have already ended.

“We could see a positive number for November next month,” said Stefane Marion, chief economist at National Bank Financial Inc. in Montreal, whose forecast of a 30,000 payroll drop was the closest. “Firms now are beginning to redeploy some of their cash flows” by hiring new workers, he said.

Revisions added 159,000 jobs to payroll figures previously reported for October and September, a report from the Labor Department showed yesterday in Washington. The previous month’s report added 91,000 for September and August.

Profits, Inventories

Corporate profits climbed 21 percent from January through September, the biggest three-quarter gain in five years, while inventories plunged at a record pace, according figures from the Commerce Department. Leaner stockpiles set the stage for recovery in production.

“If you run down your inventories hard, you also cut your labor force,” said Peter Possing Andersen, an economist at Danske Bank A/S in Denmark who projected a decline of 50,000 jobs for November. He said the ramp up in production means the manufacturing industry, which has cut workers for the past two years, may stabilize and begin hiring in “a couple of months.”

Still, some economists say that even if November’s figures are revised into positive territory, payrolls may not have reached their low point yet. “Revisions lately have been in the favorable direction,” said Neal Soss, chief economist at Credit Suisse in New York who forecast a 50,000 drop in payrolls. “We shouldn’t take that as evidence that we’re at the bottom.”

The improving labor market indicates the deepest U.S. recession since the 1930s may have ended, said the head of the group charged with making the call.

Yesterday’s report “makes it seem that the trough in employment will be around this month,” Robert Hall, who heads the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, said in an interview.

Source