SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- Buckle up and hunker down, because we're in for a rough recession. The stark message has grown louder and clearer this month as more investors have fled the disintegrating stock market and corporate earnings reports have delivered a procession of disheartening results, bleak forecasts and mass layoffs likely to exacerbate the economic misery. "We are starting to see wholesale capitulation," said Peter Morici, an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland. "We are headed for some very bad times." Although not everyone is quite as apocalyptic, the picture emerging from corporate America during the past few weeks has been unrelentingly gloomy. If executives from some of the world's largest companies are correct, here's a few of the dreary things to expect in the next few months: Fewer -- and cheaper -- gifts under Christmas trees. Emptier restaurants because more people will be eating fast-food burgers when they do splurge on meals out. More unsold cars sitting in automobile lots. Longer unemployment lines as companies cut costs to offset their declining sales.

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Even the bright spots aren't exactly feel-good stories. Two of the largest tobacco companies stood by their profit projections while another raised its earnings outlook, largely because their cancer-causing products usually sell reasonably well even in tough times. A recession hasn't been declared by the national bureau of economists who look for two consecutive quarterly declines in the United States' gross domestic product. That has yet to show up in government statistics. But that's an oversimplification that ignores other yardsticks used to identify a recession, including employment, household incomes, retail sales and business production. And business leaders aren't waiting for the official proclamation. "We are going into what is very clearly a recession mode," Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo Inc.'s chief financial officer, told The Associated Press a few days ago after the Internet company disclosed plans to fire at least 1,500 workers -- about 10 percent of the payroll -- by the end of this year. Caterpillar Inc., the world's largest maker of construction and mining equipment, cited the "recessionary conditions" in the United States in a forecast that envisions little sales growth next year. Even companies seemingly in strong positions are treading more carefully. Internet search leader Google Inc. and software kingpin Microsoft Corp., which combined have $35 billion in the bank, are keeping a closer eye on expenses. Apple Inc. predicted its profits and sales during the holiday season will be well below analyst estimates even though the company sold a record number of Macintosh computers, iPhones and iPods during the quarter it just completed in September. Executives typically remain cautious in the early stages of a downturn before they start cutting costs as the economy deteriorates. By the time many companies finally get around to pruning the payroll, the worst is over, said Liz Ann Sonders, chief investment strategist for Charles Schwab & Co. "Layoffs are often a lagging economic indicator," she said. "My only question sometimes (about corporate layoffs) is what took them so long to do it." This time, though, Sonders doesn't think a turnaround is imminent. She believes the recession began late last year and probably won't end until the middle of next year, at the earliest. Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist for Standard & Poor's equity research, has a more precise timeline. He says the recession began in December 2007 and won't end until May 2009. That would be a 17-month recession -- the longest since World War II. The United States suffered through 16-month recessions from July 1981-November 1982 and November 1973-March 1975. The steep decline in the stock market this month is another indication of more trouble ahead, if you follow the rule of thumb that investors are typically making their decisions based on what things will look like in six to nine months. That probably means even more people are going to lose their jobs during the next month, although few experts are predicting unemployment will approach 11 percent as it did in the last severe recession, during 1981-82. U.S. unemployment currently stands at 6.1 percent. Once a few companies start to fire workers, it can have a snowball effect as other executives realize they need satisfy Wall Street's desire for cost cuts or they have a chance to trim the dead wood from their work forces without looking too cold-hearted. Many companies are wrestling with major losses or eroding earnings -- distress signals giving them ample reason to retrench. The combined operating profits of 1,500 companies tracked by Standard & Poor's are expected to drop 13 percent by the time all the third-quarter results roll in. For all of 2008, the operating profits for the same 1,500 companies are expected to be down 26.5 percent. It's not difficult to understand why Chrysler Corp. announced plans during the past week to jettison nearly 7,000 jobs, including contractors. The struggling automaker said it lost $660 million in its last quarter. Others, like Yahoo and Xerox Corp., aren't losing money, but are trying to make more money off of lackluster revenue growth. By cutting 3,000 jobs in the next six months, Xerox thinks it will be able to boost its 2009 profit by at least 10 percent. Companies typically have little incentive to raise their earnings projections during a recession because they don't want to risk disappointing shareholders even more and exposing their already battered stocks to another beating. If anything, it makes more sense to dim the outlook and even absorb large losses to write off bad investments or poorly performing business units. "That just makes it a little easier to beat expectations the next year," Stovall said, "when things might be getting a little better." AP Business Writers Vinnee Tong, Mae Anderson, Mike Obel, Lauren Shepherd and Dan Strumpf in New York contributed to this story.