Over at the Freakonomics blog, Justin Wolfers takes a look at these findings from a recent Gallup Poll in which the pollsters asked people how long until recovery begins:

This is very different from the view of economic forecasters.  And, Wolfers writes, it might have something to do with the variable weight of economic terms for the general public:

It’s clear people are pessimistic about the economy. Very pessimistic. (I should quibble that the question is sort of leading; while any response was allowed, negative numbers don’t seem like a natural response.)

But I think there’s something else at play here. There’s a disjunction between how economists use words like “recession” and “recovery,” versus how the general public understand these terms. According to the NBER approach, “A recession begins when the economy reaches a peak of activity and ends when the economy reaches its trough.” So the recession has ended and the recovery has begun, but only because things got as bad as they are going to get. The “recovery” that we are in will take us from this low point, through some hard times, and hopefully, eventually, to a brighter place.

Read What Is an Economic Recovery? Levels, Changes, and Changes-in-Changes here.