Reason #1 never to believe economic predictions in the media:
The number of newly laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits fell for the third straight week, evidence that layoffs are continuing to ease in the earliest stages of an economic recovery. —AP, 9/24/09
The American economy lost 263,000 jobs in September — far more than expected — and the unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent, the government reported on Friday, dimming prospects of any meaningful job growth by the end of the year. —New York Times, today
Reason #2, three headlines that greeted me in a stack on Google News this morning:
Manhattan Apartment Sales Bounced Back Over the Summer, but Not All the Way
Finally, if you want some predictions with actual research behind them, I offer Rutgers economists Jim Hughes and Joseph Seneca, who predict that we could be heading into the “Lost Employment Decade,” and that it could be 2017 before unemployment drops to pre-recession levels of 2007, and called this an “optimistic” projection: “It’s not going to be an easy slog from here.” Though of course, I read about this in a newspaper report, so it’s probably best to take it with a grain of salt.