Dr. Mike Walden, North Carolina Cooperative Extension economist in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at N.C. State University, responds:

"Well, it actually means the economy recedes, contracts, gets smaller. And there are two parts to what economists call the business cycle; there's the part where the economy is growing, expanding, usually incomes are going up, jobs are increasing. And then there’s the part where we take a step backward. That's a recession. All those good things we saw during the expansion tend to go in the opposite direction. Recessions are actually quite common. If, indeed, we are in a recession now, this would be the 12th recession since World War II. The good news is that the growth periods - the expansion part of the economic cycle - are much longer than recessions, so the economy does make progress over time. Another way to think about this is during expansions, we maybe take four steps forward, and during recessions, we take one step back. But recessions aren't fun. As I said, unemployment goes up, profits and income go down, stocks go down, and in the public sector, government revenues tend to slow, maybe even go down. That makes it even harder for our public decision makers."