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mikkergp

> Nine in ten CEOs in the U.S. (91%) believe a recession will arrive in the coming 12 months

aren't we in a recession?

In America, half of the CEOs (51%) say they’re considering workforce reductions during the next six months

CEO's consider a lot of things, might be nice to see a graph of this over time.

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The US is officially in a recession when the National Bureau of Economic Research says we are. Two quarters of shrinking GDP is often used as a heuristic but other factors like duration and intensity are included as well. Sometimes labor and unemployment data gets corrected months later, so it is sometimes the case that a recession is not official until it has already passed.

Basically, in the US, we are in a recession when the Business Cycle Dating Committee says so.

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

We're not "officially" in a recession because the midterms are just around the corner. The numbers they use to judge inflation, GDP, recession are all fudged for political purposes. I don't need some greased politician or partisan body to tell me that.

This would be the same regardless of which party were in power, the government lies.

Show your evidence that the official consumer price index and gross domestic product are wrong.

Ah yes, the self-appointed, private, and secretive cabal of folks that decided they would be arbiters of truth, NBER.

Here's the thing -- there is no "official" or "legal" definition of recession in the United States. Yes, you'll hear regulators and politicians defer to NBER, but that's it.

The most common definition used by economists and the financial industry is the same one used world-wide: two quarters of negative growth. And by that measure we're in a recession.

That’s a private think tank. Nothing in that link claims to be any sort of official definition. I cannot tell if your comment is sarcasm.

The White House's official position is that the NBER's definition is the official one. From their website [1]:

"What is a recession? While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle. Instead, both official determinations of recessions and economists’ assessment of economic activity are based on a holistic look at the data—including the labor market, consumer and business spending, industrial production, and incomes.

"[...] The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Business Cycle Dating Committee—the official recession scorekeeper—defines a recession as “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”"

You can certainly make the argument that people shouldn't use this definition or that better measures exist, but it's objectively the official definition used by the US federal government.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/cea/written-materials/2022/07/21/...

So Hurricane Ian hit Florida, is it a disaster? Legally it isn't a disaster until the governor signs the disaster declaration.

Similarly are we in a recession? Legally the National Bureau of Economic Research gets to make that call. The rule of thumb is it gets called when for consecutive quarters of GDP contraction. However they have said they refuse to call it because unemployment is low and wages are doing well.

So you can call it whatever you like, legally it is just another day.

I just searched "are we in a recession" on Google. Seems like a popular enough question yet Google doesn't directly provide any context-aware answers next to the "people also ask" box nor "enriched and interactive search results".

The fact that people are asking, to me, is proof that we're not definitively in one. Of we were, people wouldn't be asling about it.

As of October 2023, 100% of CEOs are considering something.

We are in a recession. Unless the redefinition of the word is successful, and there's a strong push to redefine the word.

So you're going to see some confusion on this topic until the politics around it settle down a bit.

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