Feb. 21 (Bloomberg) -- Two members of the panel charged with dating U.S. economic cycles said while increasing evidence of a downturn has drawn their attention, it's too early to declare whether a recession has begun.

``Notwithstanding the darkening clouds, we are still far from the point where the committee would act,'' Robert Hall, a Stanford University economist who leads the National Bureau of Economic Research's business cycle dating committee, said in an interview. ``When the time comes, we will meet by conference call,'' though it's ``much too early'' to schedule it, he said.

While data have signaled the U.S. is moving toward its first recession since 2001, the NBER panel typically takes months to determine a turning point. The economy lost jobs in January for the first time in more than four years, and private reports this month indicated a contraction in manufacturing, two of the gauges the committee uses in making its decisions.

``We don't know yet whether this is a recession or a slowdown,'' another member, NBER research associate Victor Zarnowitz, said in an interview. ``A recession may be developing, but it has not yet been established,'' he said, adding that committee members have been discussing economic data via e-mail and over the telephone.

Manufacturing in the Philadelphia area shrank the most in seven years in February, the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia reported today. The Conference Board's index of leading indicators dropped in January, bringing the decline for the last six months to 2 percent, which the group says can be one of the ``reasonable criteria for a recession warning.''

`Signal Danger'

``The leading indicators certainly signal danger,'' Zarnowitz said, adding that declines in the measure can sometimes signal slowdowns rather than outright recessions.

Martin Feldstein, the retiring NBER president and another member of the committee, in January estimated the odds of a recession as greater than 50 percent.

In a Wall Street Journal commentary this week, Feldstein said ``although it is too soon to tell whether the United States has entered a recession, there is mounting evidence that a recession has in fact begun. Key measures of economic activity stopped growing in December and January or actually began to decline.''

Fed officials lowered their projections for economic growth by half a percentage point this year, according to quarterly figures published yesterday. Policy makers have cut the benchmark interest rate by 2.25 percentage points since September.

The rate reductions and a $168 billion fiscal package to stimulate the economy may help to lessen the severity of any recession or perhaps be early enough to prevent one, said Zarnowitz, who is a senior fellow at the Conference Board.

To contact the reporter on this story: Steve Matthews in Atlanta at smatthews@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: February 21, 2008 17:57 EST