U.S. is in the 'shortest' but 'deepest' recession since World War II, Goldman Sachs' top economist says

The U.S. is officially in a recession, but it could be over sooner than any economic downturn before it.

The National Bureau of Economic Research announced Monday that it determined the U.S. entered a recession in February, ending the 128-month expansion that began at the end of 2008 financial crisis. It's an unusually quick conclusion from the nonprofit group that's known for determining economic downturns, but also comes with hope that this recession could be shorter than ones in the past.

Recessions typically last longer than a few months, but the NBER still decided to give the coronavirus downturn this designation after looking at "the contraction, its duration," and how broad its economic effects were, it said in a Monday statement. But despite this slump looking very different from past recessions, "the unprecedented magnitude of the decline in employment and production, and its broad reach across the entire economy," lead the committee to call this a recession "even if it turns out to be briefer than earlier contraction," the statement said.

"This is almost certainly the deepest recession" since World War II, Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote in a note Monday. But "it is almost certainly also the shortest recession," he continued, seeing as no recession has lasted less than six months since 1854 and job numbers improved in May.