The US economy contracted in the first two quarters of 2022, sparking more talk of a recession. But while two consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth is often thought of as a signal of recession, it’s not the official measure.

So, what is a recession? USAFacts explains that and more in this new article. 

• Determining whether the economy is in recession is up to a team at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). The Bureau officially designates recessions by monitoring economic indicators including: GDP, employment, personal income, industrial production, and retail sales. Official recession designations don’t happen until months after a recession ends.

• Nonfarm employment figures prominently in whether the NBER declares a recession. Since 1939, nonfarm employment has increased at an average annual rate of 2%. Employment fell 13.6% from March to April 2020, the steepest drop since 1939. 
   
• The longest recession lasted 65 months: October 1873 to March 1879. The most recent recession — February to April 2020 — was the nation’s shortest. 
   
• The recessions of 1969–1970 and 1980 did not have annual losses in employment. Conversely, employment continued to decline two years after the end of the 2001 recession.
   
• The NBER also places a lot of weight on personal income. During the 2020 recession, personal income dropped 0.5% compared with 2019. March to April 2020 had the largest monthly decrease: 5.6%. The nation's steepest monthly decrease in personal income, 5.9, was from December 2012 to January 2013. However, the NBER did not declare a recession at that time.

• The South has almost double the number of law enforcement officers of any other region. Last year, 70 officers were killed in the South, more than three times the rate of any other region.
   
• Seventy-three law enforcement officers were feloniously killed in the line of duty in 2021, a 25-year high. Most killings were committed with firearm and most occurred during regular police activity such as traffic stops or investigations. Five were from unprovoked attacks on officers.
   
• Fifty-six officers were accidentally killed in 2021. Fifty-two of those deaths came from motor vehicle crashes.

• How do on-the-job officer deaths compare to other occupations? BLS metrics show that fishing and hunting workers — people who catch fish and wild animals for food, animal feed, bait, and more — had 2020’s highest on-the-job fatality rate: 132 deaths per 100,000 workers. Law enforcement was the 18th-highest, with 13 deaths per 100,000 officers.