U.S. in a Recession White House Admits : Economy: Jobs are being lost and “people are hurting,” Bush’s spokesman acknowledges.

The White House acknowledged today for the first time that the nation’s economy appears to be in a recession. “There are a lot of job losses around the country and there are people who are very hurting,” White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said.

Bush’s top economic adviser, Michael Boskin, said the nation “probably” has entered a recession, while Fitzwater called it “a recessionary kind of period.”

Fitzwater said there was no point in quibbling over words, saying: “Let’s not be cute.”

“Recessions are never happy events and we are hopeful that this one, whenever it is officially designated, will be short-lived,” Fitzwater said.

Separately, Boskin, chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said the Administration likely will acknowledge the economic downturn when it releases economic figures later this month on the just-ended fourth quarter.

“It does appear that after the longest economic expansion in the peacetime history of the United States that the economy probably has entered a recession. I believe it will be relatively short and that the worst quarter of the decline probably was in the quarter just completed on Monday,” Boskin said on NBC-TV’s “Today” program.

In a preliminary economic forecast being used to prepare Bush’s fiscal 1992 budget proposal, the Administration shows the economy shrinking at a 3.4% annual rate in the fourth quarter of 1990 and at a 1.3% rate in the first quarter of 1991, the Wall Street Journal reported today.

The usual definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of decline in economic output.