In macroeconomics, a recession is a decline in a country's real gross domestic product, or negative real economic growth, for two or more successive quarters of a year.

A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in real GDP, real income, employment, industrial production, and wholesale-retail sales. A recession begins just after the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends as the economy reaches its trough.

A recession may involve simultaneous declines in coincident measures of overall economic activity such as employment, investment, and corporate profits. Recessions may be associated with falling prices or deflation or alternatively, sharply rising prices or inflation in a process known as stagflation.

A severe or long recession is referred to as an economic depression and a devastating breakdown of an economy essentially, a severe depression, or a hyperinflation, depending on the circumstances is called economic collapse.