The economy isn't exactly blooming, but if you look closely enough, you might see a couple of green shoots:

New housing starts are stabilizing. U.S. durable goods orders are up. The Federal Reserve sees "improved" business activity in pockets across the country. Job losses seem to be slowing. The Dow Jones industrial average has been climbing, slowly but steadily, since early March.

Is this recession, the longest since World War II and perhaps the worst since the Great Depression, finally ending?

And if it does end, how soon will we know it?

The recession, many economists now agree, began in December 2007; others say it began last year. And just as there are numerous measurements to weigh when considering when a recession begins, there are lots of data to sift through on the back end, too.

One conventional metric for measuring entry into a recession is two consecutive quarters of economic retraction nationwide. The reverse is true when exiting a recession -- the country ought to show growth in its gross domestic product.

But there's more to measure than GDP growth and retraction -- if that were the only issue, the current recession would have begun in the third quarter of 2008 (when GDP shrunk 0.5 percent, followed by a larger dip in the fourth quarter), not the end of 2007.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, a private research group, uses a variety of criteria to measure the health of the economy, and its various up-and-down cycles -- GDP, unemployment, retail sales, manufacturing production and more. It then uses those metrics to identify peaks and valleys retroactively.

The research group pinned the recession's origins in December 2007 -- not when the economy "retracted," but when growth began to slacken.

It is "very much backwards looking," said Joseph Trevisani, chief market analyst for FX Solutions, of New Jersey. "They'll tell us a year from now that the recession ended" the previous year.

Poll after poll shows that most economists think the recession will end in either the third or fourth quarter of 2009. But the same polls say what passes for a recovery in 2009 won't resemble past growth.

"Whatever recovery we have might not feel much like one to a lot of people," said Brian Dolan, chief currency strategist for Forex.com, a division of Gain Capital Group.

Post-World War II GDP growth has been about 3 percent a year, but growth for the next several years is predicted to be 1 percent to 2 percent.

So what are the most-watched indicators in determining general economic health, and the end of a recession in particular?

GDP. It's still the best measure of whether the economy is growing or shrinking. But the figure can be interpreted in different ways. Does a recession end once growth is in positive territory? Or does a recession end when the economy bottoms and the negative growth number begins to shrink?

For example, the GDP is still retracting, which means that by statistician Julius Shiskin's traditional standard (consecutive quarters of negative growth), we're still in recession.

But if you look at the GDP's curve, we're actually on an upswing. The economy shrunk by 6.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008, but only 5.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

So we're still shrinking, but at least we're shrinking less.

Jobs and unemployment. The end of a recession may officially come by the end of this year, but that won't necessarily correlate to immediate job or wage growth. It's where the term "jobless recovery" comes from -- the GDP starts to grow but job numbers don't.

But even if the job numbers aren't growing, at the very least, we've applied a tourniquet to the job market's monthly bloodletting. Nonfarm payroll employment fell by 345,000 in May, bringing unemployment to 9.4 percent, but that was several hundred thousand less than what the country had been averaging the previous six months.

The number of jobless claims also seems to have bottomed out in March and April. Economists will be watching the latest unemployment numbers, which come out on Thursday for signs that the trend is continuing.

"We call them 'green shoots,' the very early indicators" that a recovery is taking root, said Stu Hoffman, chief economist for PNC Financial Services.

Savings rate. When people save more, they spend less on retail goods. It's the old "paradox of thrift" theory (when everybody saves at once, it's supposedly bad for the economy), and it's one area where nobody's seeing green shoots.

The war generation "was permanently conditioned by their experiences in the Depression," Mr. Trevisani said. The same may happen to people battered by this downturn, spooked on account of losing both 401(k) value and home equity.

"Consumers have to rebuild their balance sheets," he said.

The savings rate is up because "people need to get rid of their debt. ... When it comes down, they feel more secure with their own assets," and they'll begin spending again.

On Friday, it was announced that U.S. savings hit an annualized rate of 6.9 percent, the highest in 15 years. The high savings rate is one of the reasons that economists are forecasting slower-than-usual GDP growth, once the recovery actually hits.

Manufacturing and industrial production. It's one of the hardest-hit sectors and it's the one that stands to gain the most when the stimulus money starts oiling the economy.

Manufacturing "is down extremely low now. But when GM and Chrysler start up their [idled] assembly lines again, that's when you might actually see some rises in industrial production," Mr. Hoffman said.

June retail auto sales project to be down year-over-year, but up 14 percent from May figures.

Retail sales. In May, retail sales rose by 0.5 percent, after declines in the two previous months. Much of that was tied to higher gasoline prices, but consumers are spending a bit more on clothes and groceries.

May retail is still 9.6 percent below May 2008 levels, and because the savings rate is so high, few economists are expecting a big rebound in retail in the near future.

Housing has stabilized, with pockets of home sale growth across the country, but it's still too early to tell if this sector has recovered.

It looks as if it's bottomed out, though, which is a good sign. From April to May, new home sales dropped 0.6 percent, according to the Department of Commerce, but the median sales price for new homes was up 4.2 percent from April and down only 3.4 percent from a year ago. Existing home sales, on the other hand, rose from April to May, a sign that the $8,000 tax credit for first-time homebuyers is having an effect.

The Leading Economic Index. The LEI, calculated by a non-governmental forecasting outfit called the Conference Board, is a measurement of 10 indicators, including interest rate spread, stock prices, money supply and building permits.

If the index goes up, that's a good sign. If it goes down, it's a bad sign. Over the six-month span ending in May, the U.S. LEI increased 1.2 percent.

As always, economists preach caution. Amid the green shoots, there are plenty of warning signs that the recession might persist. The three-month stock market rally has eased a bit in June, interest rates are creeping up and investors figure to be awfully skittish until they know what's going to happen with health care reform and cap-and-trade legislation.

But in the end, does it even matter whether we can pinpoint, precisely, when a recession is over? "I think it matters most to academics and commentators," Mr. Trevisani said.

"For consumers, business managers and members of the real economy, it is background information; jobs, income, prices and personal wealth matter much more."