The already mislabeled 'recession' of 2022 didn't happen, new data shows 🤦🏻‍♂️

Revisions from the BEA says GDP didn't actually decline in Q2 2022 ✏️

On Thursday, we learned GDP grew in Q2 2022. (Source: BEA, @BenCasselman)

In mid-2022, confusion abounded on the state of the economy. Some pundits claimed that the economy had gone into recession.

Specifically, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported that the annualized pace of GDP growth was negative in Q2 of 2022, which followed a negative print in Q1.

Two consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth means the economy is in recession, right? Hold that thought.

Fast forward to present day — more than two years later. On Thursday, the BEA released an update on U.S. GDP. Among other things, it provided revisions to older measurement periods. And as the New York Times’ Ben Casselman observed, the Q2 2022 GDP growth estimate flipped to positive from negative.

“Remember the ‘technical recession’ (two quarters of negative GDP growth) in early 2022?” Casselman wrote. “Turns out it never happened.”

We’re not gonna get into the details of what drove all this.

But I think this is an opportunity to revisit how we talk about recessions.