How will we know if the US economy is in a recession?

The second consecutive quarter of economic growth that the government reported Thursday underscored that the nation isn’t in a recession despite high inflation and the Federal Reserve’s fastest pace of interest rate hikes in four decades.

Yet the U.S. economy is hardly in the clear. The solid growth in the October-December quarter will do little to alter the widespread view of economists that a recession is very likely sometime this year.

For now, the economy expanded at a 2.9% annual rate in the fourth quarter, though some of the underlying figures weren’t as...