United States Economic Forecast Volume 2 Issue 4 (December 2014) – “Consider these two facts:

1. GDP growth has been above 3.5 percent for four of the last five quarters.
2. Job growth has been over 200,000 for the past nine months.

SURPRISED? Perceptions often run behind reality. As recently as this summer, three quarters of poll respondents thought that the United States was still in a recession. Yet by economists’ definition the recession ended in June 2009. GDP returned to its pre-recession peak by the third quarter of 2011, and real disposable income per capita was 2 percent higher in 2013 than it was in 2008—and has been growing at a rate of between 1.7 percent and 2.0 percent since last March. The recovery has been slow, but it’s been a recovery. And in the past six months, we’ve seen signs that it’s speeding up. Perceptions will have to catch up. Sure, there’s still room for improvement. Construction—housing in particular—remains quite weak. Most of the income growth has gone to a relatively small group of people at the top of the income distribution, which may explain why many people don’t see the economic recovery in their own lives. Labor market participation remains depressed for younger cohorts. Nobody would claim that the current state of the economy is (as Dr. Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide might say) “the best of all possible worlds.”
But there is plenty of good news, even if it’s been buried in the data. Investment in equipment is almost 9 percent over the previous year’s level—and investment in industrial equipment is up almost 30 percent over the past year. Net exports are not subtracting from growth, despite weakness abroad and significant dollar appreciation against the yen and the euro. Oil prices cap the positives for the US economy. Lower oil prices will have a big impact on consumers both directly (less money spent on gasoline means more money to spend on other things) and through the strong psychological impact on consumers.”