Let’s say that we are defining a U.S. recession trend as 3 consecutive quarters of GDP decline. The GDP figures below would satisfy this definition. However, these figures are statistics taken from a population with zero sampling error. Q3, as it turns out, is NOT statistically significantly different from Q1. Does that mean the definition of recession is not satisfied?
Q1 – 0.8%
Q2 – 0.7%
Q3 – 0.6%