Video: What Is a Recession?

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A recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of decline in a nation's gross domestic product. Learn about the National Bureau of Economic Research, which looks to pinpoint when recessions start and end, with help from an online campaign manager in this free video on economics and recession.

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Video Transcript

What is a recession? Traditionally, a recession is defined by two consecutive quarters -- quarters in the year -- of decline in a nation's gross domestic product. And the gross domestic product is the total accumulation of a nation's goods and services produced. Now, in the United States, we have a National Bureau of Economic Research that has looked to pinpoint when recessions start and end. They actually use a more qualitative determination that's not as rigid as two quarters of declining GDP. They look at a host of factors that include unemployment, income, sales, and to try to assess general economic decline, not strictly GDP. For example, they dated the current recession that began December... They dated from December 2007, even though there was slight increases in GDP for a portion of that, they still pinpointed the recession as beginning at the time because there were other aspects of economic decline.

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What Is a Recession?

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