by David Haggith
GoldSeek
According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis
, real GDP just went from a positive 2.4% annual growth rate to -0.3%. It will, of course, take two consecutive quarters of the “growth” rate coming in below zero for the present quarter to be officially designated as part of a recession, which is always done retroactively after giving lots of time for all the economic revisions to come in. As it stands right now, though, we’re on track for the first quarter of 2025 to be declared the start of a recession.
The slide into recession is confirmed by the recessionary plunge in new jobs, which came in way below expectations at a net increase of just 62,000 jobs for the past month (April). Anything below about 150,000 net new jobs each month is generally regarded as recessionary because it takes, at least, that much job growth just to stay even with the rate at which population growth feeds into the labor pool of those wanting or having jobs. That was down by more than half from the previous slouching month of 147,000 and missed economists’ expectations of 120,000 by about half, too.