3/7/19: Record Recovery: Duration and Perceptions

While last month the ongoing 'recovery' has clocked the longest duration of all recoveries in the U.S. history (see chart 1 below), there is a continued and sustained perception of this recovery as being somehow weak.

And, in fairness, based on real GDP growth during the modern business cycles (next chart), current expansion is hardly impressive:

However, public perceptions should really be more closely following personal disposal income dynamics than the aggregate economic output growth. So here is a chart plotting evolution of the real disposable income per capita through business cycles:

By disposable income metrics, here is what matters:

1. The Great Recession was horrific in terms of duration and depth of declines in personal disposable income.
2. The recovery has been extremely volatile over the first 7 years.
3. It took 22 quarters for personal disposable income to recover to the levels seen in the third quarter of the recovery.

So what matters to the public perception of the recovery in the current cycle is the long-lasting memory of the collapse, laced with the negative perceptions lingering from the early years of the recovery.

To confirm this, look at the average rate of recovery in the real disposable income per quarter of the recovery cycle. The next two charts plot this metric, relative to the (a) full business cycle - from the start of the recession to the end of the recovery (next chart) and (b) recovery cycle alone - from the trough of the recession to the end of the recovery (second chart below):

So looking at the trough-to-peak part of the cycle (the expansion part of the cycle) alone implies we are experiencing the best recovery on modern record. But looking at the start-of-recession-to-end-of-recovery cycle, the current recovery period has been less than spectacular, ranking fourth in strength overall.

Which is, of course, to say that our negative perceptions of the recovery are anchored to our experience of the crisis. We are, after all, behavioral animals, rather than rational agents.