The Wallstrip Blog

That’s right, we’re “officially” in a recession. Shocker.

Economists define a recession as two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product. So…you’re never officially in a recession until after it’s been going on for awhile. By then, you already know you’re in a recession and you’re hopefully pulling out of it. No such luck for this particular recession.

Here’s more, from CNN:

• The National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007, making official what most Americans have already believed about the state of the economy.
• The NBER is a private group of leading economists charged with dating the start and end of economic downturns. It typically takes a long time after the start of a recession to declare its start because of the need to look at final readings of various economic measures.
• The NBER said that the deterioration in the labor market throughout 2008 was one key reason why it decided to state that the recession began last year.
• Employers have trimmed payrolls by 1.2 million jobs in the first 10 months of this year. On Friday, economists are predicting the government will report a loss of another 325,000 jobs for November.
• The NBER also looks at real personal income, industrial production as well as wholesale and retail sales. All those measures reached a peak between November 2007 and June 2008, the NBER said.
• In addition, the NBER also considers the gross domestic product, which is the reading most typically associated with a recession in the general public.

Read the full story here.