The president of the US Federal Reserve (Fed), Jerome Powell, assured this Wednesday that he does not think that his country’s economy is in recession, although he clarified that he has not seen gross domestic product (GDP) figures to be released on Thursday.

“I don’t think the US economy is likely to be in a recession right now,” Powell said during his press conference to explain the 0.75 point increase in the official interest rate announced by the Fed today.

The president of the central bank of the world’s largest economy considered that the great robustness of the US labor market, which has spent four months with an unemployment rate of 3.6% -a situation practically at full employment-, will be enough to convince the public that the country is not in recession.

In addition, Powell clarified that he does not think that the GDP can be considered a very reliable indicator to determine if the country is in recession, although he clarified that it is not up to the Federal Reserve to determine if this is the case.

The Fed chief’s statements come a day before the US GDP figure for the second quarter of 2022 is known, after it registered a 0.4% drop in the first.

Traditionally, an economy is considered to have entered a recession when it has had two consecutive quarters of falling GDP.

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