The sour economy points toward a dismal holiday shopping season for retailers. For the first time in a decade of making projections, Marshal Cohen is predicting an outright decline in holiday sales.
"Consumers are just not feeling rosy," said Cohen, who studies the retail industry for market research firm NPD Group. "They don't have the ability to stretch their credit, and they're feeling very concerned. It's certainly going to slow the early momentum of the season, and if you impede that, it's going to take an awful lot to regain it."
The shorthand definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of a decline in gross domestic product. But the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of when recessions begin and end, does not have a set definition and dates recessions only once they are over.
However, the NBER's deliberations tend to give heavy weight to unemployment.
"There is little question we are in a serious labor market downturn [and] whether the National Bureau of Economic Research eventually calls it a recession is irrelevant from the standpoint of workers," said Alan Krueger of Princeton University, former chief economist at the U.S. Labor Department. "I suspect that the labor market will continue to weaken before it improves."
That's one reason the House voted Friday to extend unemployment benefits an additional seven weeks beyond the standard 26 weeks for most workers and 39 weeks for workers in hard-hit states.
Although the House gave the extension a strong 368-28 vote, it's not clear whether it will become law any time soon. The Senate adjourned a day earlier without acting on the issue and has no plans to return until after the election.
With only six weeks to go before his unemployment benefits run out, Tom Della Flora, 50, of Columbus, Ohio, said he's swallowing hard and searching for temporary work instead of full-time.
"With the economy the way it is, nine months is just not a lot of time," the former lumberyard worker said. When the housing market imploded, he was laid off a job making $19 an hour at a retail lumberyard. "It's kind of a scary thought how long we can last."
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maura.reynolds@latimes.com
tiffany.hsu@latimes.com
Reynolds reported from Washington, Hsu from Los Angeles. Times staff writers Maeve Reston and Seema Mehta contributed to this report.
