O RLY?

So now they're telling us the recession is over. Ayup. Has been since last summer.

Tell that to several of my high GPA graduates, who are still job-hunting and living with parents. Tell that to the folks who could afford a house, but who can't get a mortgage loan. Tell that to the two businesses in my town that closed down in the past couple months.

If the recession is over, does that mean that this is really the "new normal"? Where there's insecurity and people are afraid to spend money and most workers are squeezed to the limits of their productivity because businesses won't hire, so some individuals are doing the work of three people? And where the stock market is just blah, so much so that I've revised my "work until 70 or 'til your health fails" plan to "work until 72 or until you drop dead"?

I don't know if the economists see something many Americans don't, or if they've been told to lie, but from where I sit, sure doesn't look like ANYTHING is over yet.