Quote:
Originally Posted by Shazam
The word recession has a real meaning - two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth.
So the USA is/was in a recession.
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Not in the US. Almost half of the US's post WWII recessions haven't had 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. And they've gone through 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth before without it being considered a recession.
What hasn't happened in US history is a recession without an uptick in unemployment. The unemployment rate in the first 6 months of each recession:
1949: 4% -> 6.2%
1953: 2.7% -> 5.9%
1957: 4.4% -> 7.4%
1960: 5.1% -> 6.6%
1970: 3.5% -> 5.0%
1974: 5.1% -> 7.4%
1980: 6.0% -> 7.8%
1982: 7.9% -> 9.8%
1990: 5.2% -> 6.8%
2001: 4.3% -> 5.5%
2008: 5% -> 6.8%
2020: 4.4% -> 7.9%
So far in the first 2 quarters of 2022 unemployment has dropped from 4% to 3.6%. So while chances are the US will enter a recession (or may have started to already), if unemployment somehow stays low and GDP recovers in Q3, this will have never been considered a recession.