Unofficially, we must have 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP.
The 4th quarter of 2024 was +2.4%. So we generally can't be in a recession even if 1st quarter 2025
shows negative GDP.
But the NBER is the ultimate arbiter of saying if we are in a recession or not.
The word \
www.usatoday.com
"
Who decides when the US is in a recession?
Eight economists who serve on the
Business Cycle Dating Committee, within a nonprofit research organization not affiliated with the federal government known as the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), make the call.
They are appointed by the NBER president James Poterba, who has held the position since 2008, after consultation with committee chairs and the nonprofit’s board of directors.
The committee has maintained a chronology of U.S. business cycles since its creation in 1978. Without an alternate chronology compiled or published by the U.S. government, the committee became the go-to source for formally identifying recessions.
What is a recession?
The NBER
defines a recession as a “significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months.” Three criteria – depth, diffusion, and duration – need to be met individually to some degree to formally identify a recession, according to the NBER.
The committee
considers several factors including
real income,
payroll employment,
consumer spending, industrial production, and gross domestic product when making its determinations.
“Most of the recessions identified by our procedures do consist of two or more consecutive quarters of declining real GDP, but not all of them,” NBER explains on its website. "