Has the U.S. been in an economic recession since 2022?

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.