Florida recession? GDP says: Maybe

Here’s a new personality test for your favorite economist: Ask them whether Florida is currently in a recession.

The reasonable ones will say yes. That’s because the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reported a 0.3% decline in Florida’s GDP for the first quarter of 2022 — a smaller drop than in the first quarter of 2021 just after the pandemic started (-1.2%) and a much smaller drop than the second quarter (a whopping -8.4%), but a decline all the same. And although a recession typically gets called after two consecutive quarters of decline, and we don’t yet know Florida’s second-quarter GDP, we do know that nationwide GDP fell, and Florida GDP tracks closely to the nation’s number.