Right it’s a pretty good shortcut / shorthand for recessions, but no substitute for experts making a judgment call on multiple factors. The 2020 recession decl

Right it’s a pretty good shortcut / shorthand for recessions, but no substitute for experts making a judgment call on multiple factors. The 2020 recession declared at the start of the COVID pandemic didn’t even last one quarter. Per your source, 2001 wasn’t consecutive quarterly drops in GDP but NBER prefers monthly stats over quarterly anyways. This means of the four recessions in my lifetime (1990,2001,2007) 2 out of 4 (2021 and 2001) don’t align with the shorthand of two quarters of consecutive negative growth.