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People walk on Wall Street, in New York. The National Bureau of Economic Research determines whether the U.S. economy is in recession. Credit: AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, file

No.

The U.S. has not been in an economic recession since 2022. The last recession was in 2020, at the very start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, is the only entity that officially declares the country is in a recession. An economic recession is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy.

An NBER committee looks at data points like gross domestic product — the value of all the goods and services we produce — as well as trends in unemployment, personal income, consumption, industrial production and wholesales to determine the start and end date of a recession. 

The COVID-19 recession lasted two months, which makes it the shortest U.S. recession on record. The previous record was held by a six-month-long recession in 1980.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

CT Mirror partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.

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Mariana Navarrete Villegas is a Community Engagement Reporter for The Connecticut Mirror, covering Hartford. She recently graduated from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism with a master’s degree in Bilingual Journalism. Previously, she was the Community Engagement and Video Assistant at Epicenter-NYC and a Podcast Intern at The Take, Al Jazeera English’s daily news podcast. As a reporter, she has covered stories from New York to Florida, California, Panama, and Mexico, focusing on labor rights, immigration, and community care. She also hosts 'La Chismesita,' a community radio show in New York that archives oral histories through conversations with women community leaders. Originally from Mexico, Mariana spent her teenage years in Panama. She holds a B.A. in Global Studies with a minor in Psychology from Saint Leo University, where she interned at the International Rescue Committee.