2 74% 23% 0mph WSW bar29.84 windchill2 Winter
Waxing Gibbous Winter Moon
This is not my area of expertise, but the economy is something none of us can afford to ignore. A recession for some of us is a depression for others. While poking around on the net about just what constitutes a recession, I happened onto the following information.
The folks who make the official decision about whether or not we are in a recession work at the National Bureau for Economic Research. They gather in an aptly named Business Cycle Dating Committee. Here are the criteria they use:
“The National Bureau’s Business Cycle Dating Committee maintains a chronology of the U.S. business cycle. The chronology identifies the dates of peaks and troughs that frame economic recession or expansion. The period from a peak to a trough is a recession and the period from a trough to a peak is an expansion. According to the chronology, the most recent peak occurred in March 2001, ending a record-long expansion that began in 1991. The most recent trough occurred in November 2001, inaugurating an expansion.
A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough. Between trough and peak, the economy is in an expansion. Expansion is the normal state of the economy; most recessions are brief and they have been rare in recent decades.”
The most interesting part to me is that they never “call” a recession until the data is available. In a Q & A on their website is this entry:
Q: Typically, how long after the beginning of a recession does the BCDC declare that a recession has started?
A: Anywhere from 6 to 18 months. We never consider forecasts. In general, the BCDC does not meet until it is reasonably clear that a downturn has occurred.
This means we probably won’t know for sure we’ve been in a recession until we’re just about out of it since recessions tend to be brief. According to the Business Cycle Dating Committee.
