Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"This is a group of economists that work for a private think-tank called the National Review of Economic Research. They are actually charged with making decisions about when recessions begin and end. And they did not come to a conclusion ... at the recent meeting.

"What they said is they saw many indicators up, but they are not ready to say that this recovery that appears to be here is sustained.

"They look at things like income, jobs, retail sales, factory production, and, again, most of those have been rising especially since last summer.

"The smallest gains we have had is in employment. But they were worried that well things could perhaps dip back down. And so they were going to delay making a decision, which is not uncommon.

"And one thing that I think comes out of this is many people listening to this may say, 'Well the recession, over; gee, we still have 11 percent unemployment rate in this state. We still have people out of work. Profits are not back. How can economists say the recession is over?'

"Again, you have to pay attention to what we mean by recession being over.

"What we simply mean is a recession suggests that the economy is actually falling -- things are getting worse. Once things stop getting worse and begin to get a little bit better, we say the recession is over. It does not mean that we are back to where we were pre-recessionary levels, but it does that we are headed up."