The US economy entered its first recession in a decade in March, ending a record 10-year expansion, the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) announced Monday in Washington.
The NBER's Business Cycle Dating Committee has determined that a peak in business activity occurred in the US economy in March 2001," the panel said in its announcement.
"A peak marks the end of an expansion and the beginning of a recession," said the committee, composed of six economists from Harvard, Stanford and other prestigious universities.
The declaration means the longest expansion in US history lasted exactly 10 years. The previous record for uninterrupted economic growth was set in the 1960s, a period of eight years and 10 months lasting from February 1961 to December 1969.
The US real gross domestic product (GDP) declined at an annual rate of 0.4 percent in the third quarter of this year and most economists are projecting a deeper contraction in the current quarter.
NBER's dating committee, officially designated as the arbiter of US business cycle, bases its determination not on the GDP but on a more narrow set of monthly economic indicators covering such factors as employment, industrial production, real personal income and sales.
"The committee is satisfied that the total contraction in the economy is sufficient to merit the determination that a recession is under way," it said.
The group noted that through October, the decline in employmen thad been similar to the average job losses that had occurred at the onset of the past six recessions. Although the recession began in March, the September 11 terror attacks may still have been the factor that tipped the economy into a recession, it said.
"Before the attacks, it is possible that the decline in the economy would have been too mild to qualify as a recession," the committee said.
"The attacks clearly deepened the contraction and may have been important in turning the episode into a recession," it said.
Many private economists believe the current downturn will be mild and will be over by early next year. The most optimistic forecasters are predicting a rebound in the first quarter of 2002 while the more pessimistic analysts are saying the rebound will not occur until in the late spring or early summer.
(Xinhua News Agency November 26, 2001)
