An official recession

A standard measurement for a recession is two-quarters of consecutive GDP contraction. But the official arbiter of recessions and recoveries, the Business Cycle Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), prefers domestic production and employment indicators instead. Other signs of the recession include:

• Declines in real (inflation adjusted) manufacturing, wholesale-retail trade sales, and industrial production.
• Extended declines in production, employment, real income, and other indicators.