Is There a Recession?

NBER is the organization that has historically been the final arbiter of when a recession starts and ends. NBER doesn't attempt to make real-time calls on recessions. It often takes them months or even longer to make a declaration, as they view their job to historically document economic events not to call them as they happen. In 2001, we saw negative GDP in Q1 and Q3, but not Q2, so we never had consecutive quarters of negative GDP in 2001. But, a recession was declared during the Great Recession starting in December 2007.