What everybody thought constituted a recession no longer does.
Well, heretofore two consecutive quarters of a shrinking economy meant recession.
The Chip Diller of the Biden administration told CNN on Sunday that "In terms of the technical definition" two straight quarters of a contracting GDP actually is "Not a recession." He informed, "[The] technical definition considers a much broader spectrum of data points.
President Biden doubled down on promoting public relations over sound economics on Thursday by claiming that "We're not in a recession" according to the economists he respects and by boasting of a deal struck in the Senate that raises taxes, or, as the president put it, forces the wealthy and "The largest corporations in America to pay their fair share." While common sense suggests to not raise taxes during a recession, Biden insists he does not do this because no recession exists.
Paul Krugman warned in the Times that "It would be foolish to declare that we're in a recession even if Thursday's number is negative and the first-quarter number isn't revised upward." Best, he explained, to wait for the word from "The people who actually decide whether we're in a recession."
Since 1978 the N.B.E.R. has had a standing group of experts called the Business Cycle Dating Committee, which decides - with a lag - when a recession began and ended based on multiple criteria, including employment, industrial production and so on.
So the official definition of a recession is that it is a period that the committee has declared a recession; it's an expert judgment call, not a formula.
https://spectator.org/biden-redefine-recession-rather-than-beat-it/
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