Wall Street's looming 'earnings recession' is a good thing

It's a sign that the economy is still growing

A graph.
(Image credit: Illustrated | Alliya23/iStock, champc/iStock)

Wall Street is getting nervous, with stocks slipping and then rebounding as the latest data comes in. What has got everyone worried isn't an old-fashioned recession though. It's an "earnings recession" — the "earnings" in this case being "earnings per share," i.e. the money that companies spit out to their shareholders.

And as it turns out, an earnings recession is probably good news for Americans as a whole.

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Jeff Spross

Jeff Spross was the economics and business correspondent at TheWeek.com. He was previously a reporter at ThinkProgress.