There should be a different word

for when a recession is over, i.e. the economy strengthens, and when 6-pack Joe will notice, i.e. when employment actually increases. Bernanke says that the recession is likely over and that the economy will be experiencing growth, ergo the end of the recession. What does that even mean? Does that mean our GDP will increase? I would suppose not because that is usually indicative of lower unemployment and those numbers are projected to increase. Maybe some production centers are being "reactivated" with no new work force. I guess that could happen.
But if that is not what he is talking about, or if production is increasing without an increase in work force, then there should be another term. Like unemployment. I say unemployment and not unemployment rate because the statistic is not a rate. A rate confers some dependence on time. As it stands those figures, like the 10% quoted to Bernanke, are essentially (# of Unemployed)/(# of People who comprise the work force), of coarse times 100 to make it a percent. If you want to talk about unemployment rate you could talk about the (change in unemployment)/(the change in recorded times). For instance looking at Wikipedia unemployment data between each year from 2003 to 2008 we have the following rates: -.5, -.4, -.4, 0, 1.2 and assuming a 2009 unemployment of 10% a rate from 2008 to 2009 of 4.2. The reason I would draw a major distinction between saying Unemployment and Unemployment rate, besides the correctness, is that I think what is really hurting us right now is not that 10% are unemployed but that this is a jump of 4.2% from last year. Thus, the systems that are set in place to handle unemployment which could conceivably handle the 10% are actually being overworked in handling the sharpness of the increase. Oddly, providing more people with jobs to handle the massive FLUX of unemployed individuals would fix both problems.