The National Bureau of Economic Research defines a recession on its Web site as "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."

But Americans are not quite as hung up on statistics and definitions - they tend to focus more on the job and housing picture around them when they talk about an economy in recession.

"You probably don't have 79% of economists saying that we are in a recession," said Jeoff Hall, chief U.S. economist for Thomson Reuters. The country has "lost 260,000 jobs (in the first 4 months of 2008), so for those people it is not a recession, it is a depression."