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Comment by cco | Hacker News Reader

Could you clarify? By any measure we're already in a recession today.

I'm certainly no economist so maybe there is some other detail we're missing?

Recessions are a lagging indicator. You won’t know until a year after it starts. What we are seeing right now is nothing compared to 2008. This is a slowdown, not yet, a recession.

> You won’t know until a year after it starts.

7 months in the US to be precise (if a recession started Jan 1, 2022, we find out on Jul 28, 2022).

> By any measure we're already in a recession today.

Except we are not by the accepted definition of a recession (2 consecutive quarters of negative growth).

You can make the word mean something else, but then it’s kinda useless.

The "accepted definition of a recession"? Where are you getting this from?

I understand that some government/finance organizations in specific countries might have some sort of "definition" of the term recession, but in general parlance, "recession" is just when the economy is not doing well.

Some organizations do have indicators like "2 consecutive quarters of negative growth", but doesn't mean it's a universal "accepted definition".

Well it is pretty much the official definition. But no, recession does not mean the economy is not doing well, because economic health is not binary. What recession means is economic contraction, and usually people look for confirmation after one quarter of negative growth, hence the two quarter “rule”.

That is the common definition I used, we've had two consecutive quarters of widespread negative growth. Its fair that its just the Fed estimate for Q2 still, but Q1 and Q2 are negative this year.

This definition has changed to including higher unemployment rate like 5%. So from it we could never enter recession. Tho was introduced in NBER post 2009.

We aren't in a recession. The broad job market is still way too tight.

But it is coming. It is being engineered by the Fed to reduce inflation. Probably sometime next year.

Recession is measured by GDP. Unless we're not using the technical definition. In which case a recession doesn't have a firm meaning.

Recessions in the US are declared by an NBER panel (retrospectively) based on vibes.

https://www.nber.org/research/business-cycle-dating

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-07-12/no-us-rec...

We currently aren't seeing one; that would be stagflation. We're seeing inflation plus economic activity instead.

There is a separate board of economists at the NBER that meets up and takes a vote after taking into account various economic indicators. If they vote yes, then formally the economy is in a recession. This board is a bit conservative and their recession declarations are usually after the fact (once they have looked at the indicators). So technically we are not in a recession yet.

Which measure are you using?

Two consecutive quarters of negative growth plus...well the S&P is down nearly 25% over the last six months.

If this isn't a recession I don't know what is.

We haven't reported 2 consecutive qtrs of negative growth.

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