The following analysis comes to us courtesy of Annaly Capital Management:

As of January 2010, the duration of the current recession stands at 25 months and counting. By lasting this long, it has vaulted into 5^th place on the career list, surpassing the 24-month long recession of January 1910 to January 1912. It’s the Ken Griffey of recessions. Next one in our sights is the 32-month long post-Civil War recession that ran from April 1865 to December 1867.

For all you statistical purists out there, please note that the list kept by the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of recessions, starts in 1854, and therefore does not tally some earlier American recessions, like the Panic of 1797, the Depression of 1807, the Panic of 1819 and the Panic of 1837.

Of course, the NBER declares the beginning and end of recessions retroactively (it declared the official December 2007 start date of the current recession in November 2008), so it may turn out that our current recession may already be over. Is it? Economist Robert Hall, who heads the NBER’s Dating Committee, suggested in a December 4, 2009, interview with Bloomberg that the trough in job losses may be the signal that the recession is over. On the other hand, Martin Feldstein, a member of the Dating Committee and the former president of the NBER, opined later that month that the recession isn’t over. Whether it is a recession or not, Feldstein said that growth in 2010 will be weak due to increased savings and lower spending. “Thrift in the long run is a very good thing, but increasing thrift as you come out of a recession is going to be a drag.”

Recall that the NBER defines a recession as a “significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales.” Based on these variables, it’s a mixed bag. Industrial production looks to be turning, but it’s still below 2003 levels. Personal income growth is sluggish. Retail sales ex-autos and gas, according to the Commerce Department  release yesterday, fell 0.3% in December after a strong November gain of 1.0%. The jobs picture is looking intractable. The number of people who are unemployed and who are receiving unemployment benefits (”continuing claims”) is declining on a seasonally adjusted basis-down 2.3 million from a cyclical peak of 6.9 million in June 2009 to 4.6 million at last report-but  the number of people claiming emergency unemployment compensation after their standard benefits have run out has risen by 2.4 million to over 5.0 million over the same time period. (Hat tip to David Ader of CRT Capital Group.)

William Hester at Hussman Funds looked at the primary NBER components and concluded that it is too early to tell. “With real GDP still down more than 3 percent from its peak,” he writes, “it would go against precedent for the group to declare the end of a recession with the mixed signals that are currently in place.”

The decision-making process of the NBER is slightly inscrutable. But from where we sit, our current recession is not ready to be called over, making it a shoo-in for the Recession Hall of Fame.

Source: Annaly