The U.S. has not been in an economic recession since 2022. The National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research group, is the only entity that officially declares the country is in a recession. An economic recession is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy. The COVID-19 recession lasted two months, which makes it the shortest U.S. recession on record. CT Mirror partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims.