According to the official numbers, reported here, the US is not in recession with the growth moving along at 3.3%. But it sure looks and smells like one: months of job losses; declining industrial production, a housing market so weak the government was forced into a mortgage market bailout, and prop up financial giants like AIG, and big investment banks going under.

Trouble is there no universal definition. Most economists seem to agree that we are in a recession when there is a decline in the Gross Domestic Product for two quarters. In other words, according to this definition, if there is negative growth in GDP over two quarters (e.g. minus 2% followed by one of minus 2.3%), we are in recession.

But that just highlights how economists seem to live on another planet. Their definition ignores such variables as changes in the unemployment rate or consumer confidence. And for the average person, a large rise in unemployment usually means we are heading into a recession.

Time to redefine recession, says The Economist.

"The economists' rule that a recession is defined by two consecutive quarters of falling GDP is silly. If an economy grows by 2% in one quarter and then contracts by 0.5% in each of the next two quarters, it is deemed to be in recession. But if GDP contracts by 2% in one quarter, rises by 0.5% in the next, then falls by 2% in the third, it escapes, even though the economy is obviously weaker. In fact, America's GDP did not decline for two consecutive quarters during the 2001 recession."

Even the approach of the National Bureau of Economic Research making its judgments based on monthly data for industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale and retail trade is slippery and by no means precise because it defines a recession as an absolute decline in economic activity when the reality is the numbers are usually a lot patchier than that.

Again, most people feel that a large rise in unemployment usually means recession. But even that is hard to pin down. According to the old economist joke, when your neighbor loses their job, it's an economic slowdown, when your work colleagues lose theirs, it's a recession, and when you lose your job, it's a depression.