#BringBackOurGDP

Am I the only person slightly concerned about this whole economy contracting by 2.9% in the first quarter of 2014?

It's not all "weather related". The weather doesn't drop your GDP by 2.9%. Or as Reuters puts it:

While the economy's woes have been largely blamed on an unusually cold winter, the magnitude of the revision suggests other factors at play beyond the weather.

No kidding? The weather isn't entirely to blame? I think we need to deploy a hashtag. Remember #BringBackOurGirls?. If we have another quarter of negative GDP, that's a recession.

Yeah, I think it's time for #BringBackOurGDP.

The Economy Contracted In First Quarter of 2014

Negative 1.0%

But according to CNN, it's not a big deal because...snow occurred this winter. And as we all know, snow has never, ever happened before in winter. It was a freak occurrence this time.

But according to CNN, we're totally poised for growth, y'all. Nothing like a negative GDP number to show how poised we are for growth, right?

US Economy Contracted In First Quarter of 2014

They have a term for a contracting economy, I believe.

Incorporating the new data, J.P. Morgan ChaseJPM +0.13% on Tuesday estimated GDP contracted at a 0.8% rate in the first quarter. Macroeconomic Advisers put the contraction at 0.7%. Barclays Capital predicted a 0.6% decline. Pierpont Securities estimated output fell at a 0.4% rate. Action Economics estimated a 0.2% decline.

Unless the economy really gets going, we have a very good chance of two consecutive quarters of negative GDP.

Unemployment Rate in One Graph

Everyone is celebrating that the unemployment rate dropped today. Yay! I guess happy days are here again!

Not so much. Look at this chart.

The unemployment rate (the blue line) is at it's lowest rate Since September of 2008. That's good right?

The reason that the unemployment rate is at a 5 year low is because the amount of people looking for work (the labor force participation rate) is at a thirty year low. Thirty. Years. If you're not an economist, what this means is that if you're not "looking for work" you're not counted as "unemployed". Therefore, we're just not counting as many people as "unemployed" not because they have jobs, but because they don't have jobs and aren't looking for jobs.

The red line represents what the unemployment rate would actually be if we used the same numbers of people looking for jobs as we did in June 2009.

So you can dance the happy dance all you want because the unemployment rate went down, but you're kind of fooling yourself if you think it went down because the economy is heating up.

Remember, First Quarter GDP was 0.1%. That's almost no growth in the economy at all. Excuse me if I refrain from doing a happy dance just yet.