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The world's biggest economy has been in recession for about a year, the National Bureau of Economic Research said Monday.

The United States fell into a recession in December, 2007, the NBER's business cycle dating committee agreed, saying the economic expansion that began after the 2001 recession came to an abrupt end a year ago.

“The committee determined that the decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession,” the NBER said in a statement.

The group said the committee met Friday via conference call and determined the U.S. expansion ran for 73 months, compared to the previous expansion of the 1990s, that lasted 120 months.

A recession is commonly marked by at least two consecutive quarters of declining gross domestic product.

But the NBER looks at a broader array of economy-wide measures, including GDP, payroll employment, gross domestic income, real personal income, real manufacturing sales, wholesale-retail sales, factory output and household employment.

By one benchmark, a recession occurs whenever the gross domestic product, the total output of goods and services, declines for two consecutive quarters. However, the NBER's dating committee uses broader and more precise measures.

GDP did contract by 0.2 per cent at an annual rate in the fourth quarter of 2007. However, that drop was followed by a 0.9 per cent rate of increase in the first quarter and a 2.8 per cent spurt in the second quarter, when the economy was boosted by the distribution of millions of economic stimulus payments.

However, employment, one of the measurements tracked by the NBER, has been falling since January.

GDP turned negative again in the July-September quarter of this year, falling at an annual rate of 0.5 per cent. Many economists believe GDP is falling in the current quarter at an even sharper rate of 4 per cent, and that the economy won't begin to rebound until late 2009.

The White House commented on the news that a second downturn has officially begun on President George W. Bush's watch without ever actually using the word “recession,” a term the president and his aides have repeatedly avoided. Instead, spokesman Tony Fratto remarked upon the fact that NBER “determines the start and end dates of business cycles.”

“What's important is what is being done about it,” Mr. Fratto said. “The most important things we can do for the economy right now are to return the financial and credit markets to normal, and to continue to make progress in housing, and that's where we'll continue to focus.”

Monday's NBER statement came as a key measure of U.S. manufacturing activity fell to a 26-year low in November, as new orders dropped for the 12th month in a row.

The Institute for Supply Management's monthly index of manufacturing activity fell to 36.2 from October's 38.9. The reading was worse than Wall Street economists' expectations of 38.4, according to a survey by Thomson Reuters. A figure below 50 indicates the sector is contracting.

The November reading was the lowest since May 1982, the Tempe, Ariz.-based ISM said, when the U.s. economy was in the midst of a painful recession.

Economists said the report indicates that the economy is likely in a steep recession and times will remain tough for manufacturing companies in the coming months.