So, what's an income recession?

Apparently, Australia is in an income recession.

This new-fangled term has been bandied around since the Australian Bureau of Statistics published the quarterly national accounts on Wednesday.

It's not everyday we suffer an income recession, but before we all go around beating ourselves up over this calamity, it's important to know just what it is.

The starting point is a familiar measure, gross domestic product, or GDP.

We've all heard of that.

It's the amount of stuff - goods from coal to houses or packets of frozen peas, and services from haircuts to plane trips or lawn mowing - that's produced in Australia.

And it's adjusted for price changes or, in other words, expressed in real terms.

If GDP falls for two or more consecutive quarters we're generally considered to be in a recession, although that rule is not a law of nature, just a rule of thumb.

GDP is important, because it's a measure of production, and production generates jobs.

But before using it as a measure of the real value of income - what Australians can buy with the revenue from their GDP - it has to be tweaked.

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So, what's an income recession?