The Economist, which has been tracking the number of articles in the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal containing the word "recession," found a sharp increase in mentions since the beginning of September. Since June 2009 the mentions of "recession" in newspaper articles has declined steadily, except for a brief plateau in summer 2010. In early 2009, mentions reached an all-time high with almost 4,500 articles incorporating the word "recession" in the first quarter. Until this September the number had leveled off to a little over 1,000 articles per quarter. Since the beginning of September this number has climbed to almost 1,500 articles.

Although the The Economist's "R-word index" is self-admittedly an "informal" gauge, it accurately showed high levels of mentions before both the 1990 recession and the 2009 recession.

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