Wait! I thought the South was where all the jobs are!

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Jobs.

Although the official time frame for "The Great Recession" was December 2007 through June 2009, for the millions of long term un and underemployed, the daily reality is that not only has the recession never ended, it is more applicable to The Great Depression than it is to any of the various acknowledged recessions since the end of WWII. One of the articles of faith from the always surprised Economists is that job creation lags other indicators, yet here we are, over two years since the "end" of the last recession and the official unemployment rate is still at 9.1% with the underemployed figure at 16.2% for August 2011.

Each week on Thursday, there's a report of the Initial Jobless Claims for the week before. Like many of the earlier weeks, last week's report forced the headline writers to find the lone tidbit of almost good news to concentrate on in their ledes. From Reuters:

(Reuters) - Americans filed fewer new claims for jobless benefits last week but the decline was not enough to dispel worries the economy was dangerously close to falling into a new recession.

Applications for unemployment benefits dropped 9,000 to 423,000 in the week ended September17, the Labor Department said on Thursday. That was roughly in line with expectations.l

Of course, once again, the earlier report had been revised upwards (from 428K reported on September 15). It is not going too far out on a limb to predict that the 423K reported for September 22 will be revised upwards on September 29.

I did not go too far out on a limb back in June when I first predicted a "double-dip" and it still was a short limb when I reiterated the prediction in July. Nouriel Roubini has made the same prediction last Thursday documented from his tweets (via Business Insider). A few days earlier (September 19), Roubini had written this op-ed on how to keep the coming Recession from being a Depression.

Officially, It Will Be a Double-Dip

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When I was a kid, I used to love double-dips. I'd go to the doctor and afterwards, we'd stop by the drug store soda fountain for my free ice cream. Summers, there would be all the ice cream suppers at the churches with fresh home made ice cream and cake. Double-dips of chocolate ice cream and cake!

Unfortunately however, today's double-dip will be a recession. Yes, there it is; I'm predicting that we will officially fall back into a recession in the very near future even though for the 25M to 30M long term un and underemployed, we've never, ever left the recession that began officially back in December '07 and ended officially in June '09. I do so very much hope that I am wrong on this but will even go so far as to act like an economist and claim to be surprised if I am wrong.

What makes me think this will happen? Well, to start with, too many folks like The Benbernank in his speech last Tuesday in Atlanta and the presidents of the Philadelphia and New York Federal Reserve Banks all saying the economy will improve in the second half of 2011. In addition, Bloomberg has a survey of economists claiming this as well:

After growing at a 2.3 percent annual pace this quarter, the world’s largest economy will expand at a 3.2 percent rate from July through December, according to the median forecast of 67 economists polled from June 1 to June 8.

Rising exports, stable fuel prices, record levels of cash in company coffers and easier lending rules will be enough to overcome the damage done by one-time events like poor weather and the disaster in Japan, economists said. Nonetheless, the current slackening means Federal Reserve policy makers will wait even longer to raise interest rates next year, the survey shows.