Alberto Franco

“Rather than fixating on a word to define the economy, we should focus on working to restore growth and improving quality of life for everyone who lives here,”Alberto Franco, an economist from the consulting firm Ecoanálisis said.

This is the most insightful thing that I have heard anyone say about the economic crisis we are in right now. Everyone keeps fixating on whether or not to call it a recession. Here in the U.S. we have come to terms with the fact that we are in a recession however, the Ticos are not using that term yet, but are debating on it. I agree with Franco and instead of focusing on the terminology, we should focus on what to do to improve the job market and most importantly stimulate the economy with bringing in more tourism. Tourism is at the top for foreign exchange in Costa Rica. Right now Costa Rica needs to work on some kind of way to bring in tourists. It'll be hard to do because the U.S. isn't spending any money on vacations right now but they need an incentive.

U.S. and Costa Rica unemployment rates

http://www.ticotimes.net/topstoryarchive/2009_02/022009.htm

According to Gillian Gillers, Tico Times Staff, 25,000 people have lost their jobs between November and January. According to Wikipedia, Costa Rica has a current population of 4,016,173 persons.

According to the New York Times, in the last four months, 2 million jobs have been lost in the United States. According to the United States Government, the U.S. has a current population of 303,824,640 persons.

When you divide this up, the percentage of people that lost their jobs in Costa Rica is .62% and the percent of people that lost their jobs in the United States is .65%. The percentages are very close and this shows that both the United States and Costa Rica are feeling the recession equally in a sense.