mining US business cycles said on Monday.
The designation was expected, but notable for its speed, coming a mere four months after the recession began. The committee has typically waited longer before making a recession call in order to be sure. When the economy started declining in late 2007, for example, the group did not pinpoint the start of the recession until a year later.
But growth may well recover from there, possibly making the current downturn not only among the sharpest but also among the shortest on record. Though the data that began to accumulate in March rival some of the statistics from the Depression era, economists expect growth to resume this summer and likely continue unless the virus resurges.