Americans question official 'end of recession'

The downturn officially ended, and the recovery officially began, in June 2009, according to an announcement Monday by the official arbiter of economic turning points. Since that point, total output — the amount of goods and services produced by the United States — has increased, as have many other measures of economic activity.
But nonfarm payrolls are still down 329,000 from their level at the recession’s official end 15 months ago, and the slow growth in recent months means that the unemployed still have a long slog ahead.
“We started from a deep hole,” said James Poterba, an economics professor at M.I.T. and a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, which declared the recession’s end. “And clearly the bounce-back has not been immediate after hitting this trough.”