Maybe not even then? GDP dropping while employment, spending, and demand increase indicates an economic expansion coinciding with a decrease in labor productivi

Maybe not even then? GDP dropping while employment, spending, and demand increase indicates an economic expansion coinciding with a decrease in labor productivity, which is extremely weird and not at all like a conventional recession where the economy contracts. Different terminology might be required. Additionally, with inflation at such a high level (9% or so), the last two quarter's real GDP growth estimates (-1.6% and -0.9%) are small percentages compared to the size of the error bars on the required inflation adjustment to compute the real GDP. Computing inflation is tricky and requires a lot of hand waving and boiling down different price changes across different sectors of the economy to get a single number, and if the calculation is off by even 1% (i.e. inflation is actually 8%), then the real GDP growth for last quarter would be positive at 0.1%. This is also happening at the same time that the US dollar is getting increasingly valuable vs most foreign currencies, so measured in terms of foreign currency value the US real GDP is still increasing, which just compounds the weirdness. Putting all of this together, I don't think the term "recession" is a good fit.