Paris - The United States and the nations of the eurozone have entered an economic recession that will last at least until the third quarter of next year, the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in its semi-annual Economic Outlook, released Tuesday in Paris.

"Twenty-one of 30 OECD member countries will go through a protracted recession, of a magnitude not seen since the early 1980s," OECD chief economist Klaus Schmidt-Hebbel told journalists during the launch of the report.

According to the organization's outlook, the OECD countries as a whole went into recession in the third quarter of this year and will experience four consecutive quarters of negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth - that is, until the third quarter of 2009.

As a result, the US, eurozone and Japanese economies are expected to shrink overall in 2009, with the US economy seen to contract by 0.9 per cent next year, while the eurozone GDP will shrink by 0.6 per cent and that of Japan by 0.1 per cent, the OECD said.

GDP for all 30 OECD nations is seen to decline by about 0.4 per cent on the average next year.

"The recession will be deeper and longer than previous recessions in four OECD countries - France, Italy, Germany and the United States," Schmidt-Hebbel said, and warned: "Recovery will be slow." (dpa)