When do things get better? That is all in the eye of the beholder.  The issue is: what and who defines "better"? For example, there is no doubt there are more hotel rooms open in the city. But, does that mean because all of a sudden the industry isn’t making money hand-over-fist that the workers should take a hit? The union, rightly, says no:

It is far too soon to judge the financial health of the industry, said Peter Ward, president of the New York Hotel and Motel Trades Council, an alliance of hotel unions.

“They had 10 years of magnificent, never-ending upside: record profits and record occupancy,” Mr. Ward said Thursday. “Now, they’ve had just 100 bad days, and a bunch of these big tough capitalists are crying for relief. They want to take it out on dishwashers and room attendants.”

Housekeepers at unionized hotels make $803.93 a week and are due for a 3.5 percent wage increase in July, which would bring their pay to $832.07, union officials said. Dishwashers make $781.42 a week, which is to increase to $808.77 on July 1. Bellhops make comparable wages; waiters’ wages vary depending on tips. The Carlyle is among 20 hotels in the city that asked an arbitrator for help in reopening union contracts over the last week, although they have yet to make specific demands. Others include the Courtyard Times Square South, the Paramount Hotel, the Jolly Hotel Madison Towers, the Holiday Inn SoHo and the Radisson Lexington.

   If the workers were to see their wages cut because, as Ward says, these tough capitalists are having a few bad days, will the economy be "better" in a year when the tough capitalists are making money again–but the workers are making less? Is that a recovery? And for whom?

   Another example is the variety of forecasters watching the stock market zoom up again–which many are saying is a false mirage of a bear market rally, which I agree with–and starting to predict a "recovery" by the Fall. Check this out in The Wall Street Journal today:

Economists in the latest Wall Street Journal forecasting survey expect the recession to end in September, though most say it won’t be until the second half of 2010 that the economy recovers enough to bring down unemployment.

   But, then, this:

Indeed, economists’ prospects for the labor market remain bleak. Just 12% of the economists expect the unemployment rate to fall some time this year. More than a third of respondents expect the jobless rate to peak in the first half of 2010, while about half don’t see unemployment declining until the second half of 2010. By December of this year, the economists on average expect the unemployment rate to reach 9.5%, up from the 8.5% reported for March. They do see the rate of decline slowing, forecasting 2.6 million job losses in the next 12 months, compared with the 4.8 million jobs lost in the previous period.

  So, somebody will declare the recession ending in September, even though millions of people will still be out of work for a lot longer. And, recall what I wrote recently: the unemployment rate is really 15 percent when you look at all the people who are not only officially counted as unemploymed but also add in all the people who have given up looking for work or only have part-time work because they can’t find full-time work.

   The mirage of a "better" economy will need to be contested with the reality facing most people.