Recessions and the NBER

I think we can definitively say the NBER isn't going to call the first half of 2022 a recession.

The longest it ever took the NBER business cycle dating committee to determine a recession was 21 months. Not that this was ever seriously in question.

They don't just look at GDP, but several indicators. And they weight GDI equally with GDP. That's why you are better off looking at both measures. Outside of GDP, the economic indicators were good in the first half of 2022.

Also the NBER generally focuses on the three Ds: depth, diffusion, and duration. Depth as in a significant decline. Diffusion as in a broad decline across economic indicators. Duration as in a sustained decline. If one or two of those is particularly bad, they may still call a recession, but that's generally the exception. For example in 2020, the pandemic caused a severe and broad decline in the economic indicators, but this only lasted a couple months.