What exactly is recession?

Question

i was watching the news yesterday and they were saying how the economic growth has 'ground to a halt' after 16 years of growth and we could be facing a recession

i had absolutely no clue as to what this growth is or this recession!

can someone explain it to me?

Answer 1

The state of the economy declines; a widespread decline in the GDP and employment and trade lasting from six months to a year.

in layman's terms, it means jobs are being lost (layoffs, shutdowns) and there is no large scale purchasing.

when people are buying and selling houses, a lot of money is moving. this means a boom time for banks, lenders, financial companies, builders, etc. when not as many houses are being bought/sold, less money moves around, so many people have nothing to do.

Answer 2

Recession is a slowdown in business cycles. Focus of business cycles is Gross Domestic Product, shortly GDP.

It means overall production. If this production has decreasing trend for 2 consecutive    quarters it can be said that economy is in recession.

Eg: GDP of 2007 Q1>GDP of 2008 Q1

and GDP of 2007 Q2>GDP of 2008 Q2 that's recession

Answer 3

Officially it is when you have two consecutive quarters of GDP decline. Unofficially many people like to use it to describe any sort of economic slowdown -- which is not very precise and a little like describing a fender dent as a car crash.