With increasing signs of a weakening economy, the National Bureau of Economic Research officially declared Monday that the U.S. is in a state of recession.

The recession began in December 2007, according to a statement from the bureau, which is a nonpartisan, private economic research organization.

“A recession is a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, normally visible in production, employment, real income and other indicators,” according to the statement. “The committee determined that the decline in economic activity in 2008 met the standard for a recession.”

Anthony Sanders, a professor of finance and real estate in the W.P. Carey School of Business, said the statement affirmed what economists around the country already understood.

“It’s a public pronouncement of what we already know,” he said. “It felt like a recession. It looked like a recession. We’re seeing job loss; we’re seeing spending declines.”

The National Bureau of Economic Research cited a number of factors for the state of recession.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, payroll employment or the amount of held jobs in the U.S. economy peaked in December 2007 and has declined during every single month since.

Dennis Doby, senior director for labor market information at the Arizona Department of Commerce, also said the announcement reflected what economists already knew.

“It just makes what we’ve seen in the statistics official,” he said.

For example, Doby said, Arizona’s nonfarm payroll employment declined about 2.6 percent from October 2007 to October 2008, a loss of about 70,900 jobs.

“We believe the losses will slow in 2009,” he said. “Whether we get back to positive growth in 2009 is still a little hazy, so to speak.”

Sanders, who testified in Congress on Nov. 14 about the U.S. government’s financial bailout plan, said the national recession could last several years.

“[The National Bureau of Economic Research] looks at recessions in a historical context,” he said. “They’re actually backward-looking, in a sense.”

Sanders said the U.S. economy would only begin to recover when the housing market recovers.

Dennis Hoffman, University economist, director and associate dean for research and doctoral programs at the Carey School, said in an e-mail that the recession could have been mild except for the credit crunch that became evident in September.

Hoffman said the housing market has had severe effects on the national economic climate.

“The housing bubble has lasting effects that dampen confidence in all sectors of the economy,” he said. “And worse, the investment itself pays no real dividends.”

The lack of good returns from investment in housing is different from another recent speculative bubble, he said.

“In contrast we had a dot-com bubble in the late 1990s,” he said. “But at least [when] it was over, we had a lot of productivity-enhancing IT infrastructure in place.”

Reach the reporter at matt.culbertson@asu.edu.