The U.S. economy officially peaked in December 2007, which means all of last year the country was in a recession. But what about Maryland?

It probably depends on your definition. The National Bureau of Economic Research, which "calls" recessions, makes its decisions mainly by looking at job numbers, income and economic growth (gross domestic product).

I mention this because today the federal government released GDP by state, which gives us a peek at local economic activity.

Maryland's GDP growth, which was 1.8 percent in 2007, slowed to 1.3 percent last year. The United States saw a much more precipitous drop -- from 2 percent to 0.7 percent. That's according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.

(Wait, you wonks are saying, isn't a recession by definition a drop in GDP? Like, two consecutive quarters or somesuch? Nope, the NBER says. A recession frequently does show a two-quarter-or-more drop in GDP, but not always.)

So that's the story on GDP -- better in Maryland than in the U.S., but less growth than before. As for income: Maryland's per-capita personal income rose 3.5 percent last year. That's also a slowdown from 2007, when per-person income in the state jumped nearly 6 percent. (The country saw a similar-sized drop in per-capita income growth, but it was lower than Maryland's to begin with. So its 2008 increase of 2.9 percent is also lower than Maryland's.)

And what about employment? No growth there. Maryland shed almost 10,000 jobs last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That's a drop of almost half a percent. Exactly the same decrease the nation as a whole saw last year, as it happens.

So: Local recession or not? It might be a semantics issue at this point. For the housing market, at least, a slowdown in economic growth and income growth paired with a loss of jobs isn't good news, whether you slap the "R" word on it or not.