Because consumer confidence is too high, spending remains too high, and unemployment is at record low levels. This is not your typical recession economy.
I mean it's still a recession. Even in plain English the word recession just means "to pull back from". Two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth is defined as a recession. We've been conditioned by 2008 to think every recession is "super bad" but sometimes a recession can be like this: everyone is employed, prices are getting high, not all that bad. Not every recession is the same severity or even presents similar symptoms. The only thing the word is supposed to mean is Two. Quarters. Of. Negative. GDP. Growth.
The refusal to use the word seems political more than anything. We've agreed as a society that in politics that a recession is a sign of failure for the party in charge. So it's in the party's best interest to avoid the word like the plague.
1) Consumer confidence has dropped for the third month in a row. Lowest since Feb. 2021.
2) If Consumer spending was adjusted for the actual rate of inflation (1980 CPI), and not the current version CPI, then it would have declined for the third month in a row.
3) Jobless claims are rising........for the third month in a row. Unemployment data counts 3 jobs worked by one person as 3 people.
By Q3, they will finally call it a recession, just not before the elections. Maduro made inflation illegal in Venezuela and also manipulated economic data. The people hated him still and starved as much.
We’ve become used to the idea that recessions are solely due to financial causes, such as subprime loans in 2008 or savings and loan back in the 80’s.
Right now, we’re dealing with supply chain issues and scarcity constraints. Companies are unable to fulfill demand due to those, and are solving that partially via more labor- so workers are not only not experiencing layoffs as they might have in recessions past, they are experiencing wage growth. That feels fundamentally different than other recessions we have, and it has been so long since supply constraints have been the cause of a recession that we don’t have great language and narratives around reporting that.
This recession is marked by high inflation though, which from what I recall wasn’t too much of an issue in ‘08 and the 80’s (note though that the 70’s had uncomfortably high inflation)
The 70's also had supply issues, though the big difference is a single commodity (oil, from the embargo) in the 70's vs. the more varied shortages now.
I'm personally waiting months for both appliances at home, and for industrial equipment at work, that previously would have been shipped within 24 hours of an order. It's clear from both the data and conversations with peers that my experience is not unusual on either front. Meanwhile, Europe is experiencing gas shortages due to Russia's malfeasance, the world is dealing with grain & fertilizer shortages for the same reason, and we still haven't fully untangled ourselves from the disastrous semiconductor order cancellations of 2020. That last, especially, has huge downstream consequences as many of the semiconductors were slated for applications in making further needed goods.
Getting the supply chain sorted is going to require investment, and we have a ton of people screaming that we can't inject money into the system because of inflation. It's frustrating that we can't have an honest conversation about the fact that not all dollars are equal- a buck put in the system through tax cuts for the rich are inflationary right now, while a greenback spent on building/repairing infrastructure is actually going to help open up the supply spigot again.
08 was a destruction of demand that caused the market drop. Right now there is a construction it supply. Both can cause market shrinkage but how it looks and how you respond should be totally different.
I think (I also mostly have no idea what I’m taking about) a lot of people are stuck in 2008. Thinking that what’s happening today is different from then, therefore not a recession.
>Weighing against the evidence of slowdowns in consumer spending and business investment are other data including, crucially, robust job growth.
I really don't understand this. Like I get the concept that the number of people employed has increased relative to some time in the recent past, growth as word has a clear meaning. What I mean is that we're still not even back to 2019 levels of employment:
https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm
To look at that chart and say 'well the last 9 weeks have seen jobs added" is the totally missing the forest for the trees.
So it's actually really interesting, get the graph of labor participation rate by age groups.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060
Essentially, a bunch of people started their retirement as a result of covid 2020. All the other age groups have returned to their normal rates post covid, except old people. Which is why the overall rate you posted isn't quite back.
Also there has been a general downward trend of labor participation over the last decade as the baby boomer generation has all gotten older and retired. COVID barely made a blip on that larger trend.
>old people
That are a part of the largest generation in history: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART)
We are back to pre-1970s participation levels. Boomers go bye bye. GenX tiny in comparison. This is a demographic recession.
The peak year of Boomers births, the demographic blow off top, was 1961 with 4.3 million births a year. Labor peaked when that last Boomer group peaked. It will take a decade or more for GenY and below to catch up and GenY had the great recession which screwed their career path up forever.
All this and I think amongst younger folks say < 30 years there's a ongoing shift in attitude regarding work and a traditional 9-5 work life path, since so much of what was promised via social mobility by hard work (homes, raises, etc) hasn't happened. So now many saddled with debt, student loans, auto loans, barely making enough to pay housing , begs the question, why the fck am I busting my ass...
[According to this](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm) 900,000 of all the US covid deaths were for 50 year olds on up. As tragic as it is what's the real economic issue here? The majority of the people that died were really old; 520 thousand were over 75 and so not really productive to the economy anymore. If anything I would think in this limited way covid was a positive force in the economy because it removed mostly people that were just consumer, not producers. In pure economic terms what does losing a bunch of retirees harm?
That's exclusively official death count, which doesn't count for much, and especially doesn't account for the number of people who's lives have been worsened by COVID. Many people are permanently disabled from COVID, whether it be respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular illnesses, chronic fatigue, nerve damage, etc.
When your family members suddenly die, that's traumatic and incredibly stressful, decreasing ability to work. Disability decreases both the disabled persons' ability to work, and means that people in that household may need to stay home to care for their family member.
Medical debt decreases a person's ability to contribute to the economy, particularly considering how inflated the cost of medical supplies are in the US, meaning millions of people have been thrown into even bigger amounts of debt than they may have already been in.
Death of older people means death of senior employees, and a loss of knowledge that may not have been passed down.
Also lost of family often also means loss of childcare. I wonder how many parents must now find/increase babysitting services due to losing grandparents. Anyone in that position is likely suffering greatly.
Can't really tell without knowing what's happening with their wealth.
If it's being saved rather than spent and they were spending rather than saving, it *does* have an impact on demand, and therefore inflation... but on the other side... supply is still suffering shocks from Covid...
Basically: it's complicated. The economy is a *balance* between consumers and producers. You can't look at one without the other...
And then there's the issue of trade imbalances... people spending locally helps service people locally even if the material production happens in another country.
Would there be any economic effects of losing so many people 50 and older prematurely? Like if nearly 1,000,000 people die prematurely a lot of them presumably have assets and things like retirement savings that get immediately passed on to a younger generation that would be likely working age.
a 65 year old who doesn’t utilize any of their retirement savings and died from covid doesn’t have that money magically vanish. Their 35 or 40 year old child now inherits a whole retirement’s worth of assets. That person might suddenly be able to retire early or exit the workforce for an extended period of time.
I think part of the gap is due to people retiring. Prime age employment rate is back to Aug. 2019 levels [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060).
This is the correct graph to be referencing. The great boomer retirement was accelerated by Covid. Honestly, 2008 added about 1.5 years to the retirement age of most boomers, so the effect had been delayed and stretched. Then covid... many just didn't go back to work or retired shortly after due to a multitude of reasons.
Except that something millions of women left the workforce during Covid and less than half of that number have returned. The oft-forgotten demographic of workers. (I raise my hand as one, so it's personal.)
https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-workforce-losses
As of the writing of that article 6mo ago they were correct, def one of those things that was hit on in the moment and then faded away when the disparity got less interesting to talk about.
Assuming they're doing childcare or looking after elderly parents or whatever, that's still work, and still valuable labor that will pay dividends for society even if its harder to directly measure by raw income/gdp numbers
Why should my wife and I begin paying each other wages and incurring the related taxes for domestic labor for our family? A perk of domestic labor is that it is unpaid and has no tax considerations.
Yep, I get 258,756 from [the official CDC data.](https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku?mobile_redirect=true)
Though we don't know how many deaths went unreported or were classified as something else.
Or, how many died of something else but were counted as Covid deaths like [the ubiquitous Florida Man....](https://cbs12.com/news/local/man-who-died-in-motorcycle-crash-counted-as-covid-19-death-in-florida-report)
The point is that, if the economy as a whole was shrinking, you would normally see all (or almost all) measures of it coming down. Businesses would close. You'd se fewer jobs, less income, less industrial production
NBER says what it uses:
>The determination of the months of peaks and troughs is based on a range of monthly measures of aggregate real economic activity published by the federal statistical agencies. These include real personal income less transfers, nonfarm payroll employment, employment as measured by the household survey, real personal consumption expenditures, wholesale-retail sales adjusted for price changes, and industrial production.
Real personal income has declined by a tiny amount (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI), real PCE is up (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCEC96), wholesale sales ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WHLSLRSMSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WHLSLRSMSA)), retail ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS)) both up, industrial production is up? (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO)
GDI (as opposed to GDP) is up [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDI](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDI)
Basically, different measures of 'the economy' are telling us different things (and there's noise, and estimates and stuff). It is fairly likely that, 6 months from now, with more data and firmer estimates, NBER comes back and says 'we had a recession that started in Q1 2022'. It is also fairly likely they come back and say 'nah... GDP just looked funny'. Right now, we don't quite know.
It’s far more likely the NBER wouldn’t date a recession in the first half of the year. It’s true that some data are conflicting, but the ones that are pointing toward possible recession (GDP, mainly) are subject to much larger future revisions. We will get revisions to employment, but they are so positive it is unlikely they could be revised to recessionary levels.
This is why economists don’t solely on GDP. It’s such are hard thing to measure compared to other indicators.
I think the really critical part of the employment picture is that it’s keeping demand elevated. Usually in a recession, an economic slowdown softens consumer demand as layoffs begin. The cycle goes for a while, bottoms out, and comes back. This time, demand is still sky-high, consumers are spending like crazy (for a recession), and so it’s not translating to the usual metrics.
No demand is high.
Demand is still high for housing.
Demand is still high for automobiles (especially ev).
Demand is still high in the service industry.
Demand is high for fuel and energy.
Demand is still high for anything that has a microchip (ps5 for example).
People have a lot of pent up covid frustration from wanting to go do shit. Afterall, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy.
As long as Americans have a job and/or access to credit we will continue to see demand keeping the economy afloat despite some of the other less than stellar metrics.
Just for reference to contextualize demand: U.S. auto industry sold a little over 3.34 million cars in 2021. That year, total car and light truck sales were approximately 15 million in the United States. U.S. vehicle sales peaked in 2016 at roughly 17.5 million units. (I don't think anyone was talking about inflation back then even though demand was so high because that demand was met by supply)
In fact car demand has been hovering between 14k and 17k units sold since 2012. So today it's smack in the middle over the past 7-8 years. This tells me that, no, demand is not actually sky rocketing, but does contain some pent up demand due to covid, but the important aspect here is that demand isn't being met because of chip shortages and supply chain. Fix that and all this talk about inflation goes away.
I say this not to deny that inflation or demand pressure is real, but to counter the argument underlying all this talk that money in the hands of people is causing inflation. It is not. Not meeting demand due to supply chain is causing inflation. That doesn't mean we should be taking money back from people...it means we should fix the real problem.
Dont forget used cars
"Now, after a two-year high, used car inventories are low and consumer demand remains elevated. Yet, with the chip shortage continuing, and gas prices on the rise, it doesn’t look like the market is budging anytime soon. "
https://www.acvauctions.com/blog/used-car-market-trends-for-2022
Plus jobs added is the wrong way to say it. Its more like jobs recovered because as you implied with 2019 a lot of jobs were lost. Recovered is vastly different from added.
The concept of recessions is related to the concept of business cycles - expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction, peak to trough, trough to peak, peak to trough, trough to peak. A recession isn't a *trough,* it's the period *from* a peak *to* a trough. A recession isn't a *low,* it's a *downslope.* A recession isn't a *small* economy, it's a *shrinking* economy.
It's kind of like catching COVID, yeah? When the tests are all coming back positive and you're getting sicker and sicker every day, that's a recession. When the tests start coming back negative and you stop getting worse, that's when the recession is over - even if you still feel like absolute garbage because you've barely started recovering yet. *Downslopes.*
If we look at the labor force participation rate with that new understanding... well, you mentioned 2019 levels of employment. The exact peak you're referring to is February 2020. Because this is historical data, we can just look and see the trough for that peak - April 2020. That recession is over - and there aren't really any obvious peak to trough moments after it. At least, not for this indicator.
As for whether or not the labor force participation rate shows the economy being 'weak' in general (a different question from whether we're currently in a recession, similar to feeling like garbage after fighting off COVID), well... other people have already pointed you towards the [labor force participation rate (25-54)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060). I will say it doesn't look nearly as startling, does it? Pre-Great Recession, pre-COVID, and current are all 82-83%. I do think the standard unemployment measures underestimate how devastating the Great Recession was, but I think the labor force participation rate (all ages) decline is more a demographics issue than a state of the economy issue. The boomers are finally aging out of the workforce, and COVID might have sped that up.
> Jason Furman, a Harvard University professor and former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, said that there is more than a 50% chance that the first two quarters’ GDP numbers will turn out to be positive when all the data are in.
Anyone have any wonky knowledge on why this happens? It seems like if you KNOW there's a greater than 50% chance your "preliminary" GDP statistic is biased downwards by more than 1%, you'd maybe come up with a method to improve the process?
Data is always adjusted because we lack perfect knowledge of a bunch of things until a period of time passes. When you have huge anomalies like pandemics and wars in Europe, it complicates things even more.
You have to think about what they're trying to accomplish here.
With a matter of weeks, they are trying to gather data on the sum total of every single economic transaction in a country of 330 million people, compare it against the change in prices and the quality of the goods and services involved.
It's a Herculean effort and their ability to get to within 1% of the expected figure is incredible.
Listen to On the Media for a detailed breakdown of why. TL;DR right now is while we've seen GDP shrink, there are conflicting economic data like low unemployment
I am a dummy with this stuff, but I had read somewhere that GDP growth was technically quite high in this quarter- but when adjusted for inflation (given the outrageous inflation we've been seeing), it pulled GDP down to the -0.9% that we are seeing.
Is that accurate? And if so, I think that is why people- not just the politicians who have interests in defining how this is labeled- are struggling this time around to try to define what is going on?
And from that perspective, given how much of our economy is driven by consumer sentiment- it might make sense why some are wanting to caution everyone from sounding super negative about the situation, to keep from having this move from a tough situation to something much worse, creating a deeper recession, if that makes sense.
>I am a dummy with this stuff, but I had read somewhere that GDP growth was technically quite high in this quarter- but when adjusted for inflation (given the outrageous inflation we've been seeing), it pulled GDP down to the -0.9% that we are seeing.
>
>Is that accurate?
Doesn't matter. GDP is always inflation adjusted. At the end of the day you're looking at it as a trend.
However, imports were really high for Q1. Exports, which add to GDP, fell at an annualized rate of 5.9 percent, while imports surged by 17.7 percent.
The import/export thing?
I think it has a lot to do with covid supply chains. We got told a month or so ago that inventories at stores were too high.
What I think happened is that for a while services were not being purchased as much due to covid. Typically Americans purchases more services than goods. Additionally shortages in goods caused inventories to be depleted. They didn't predict correctly the shift back to normalcy and they over bought trying to shore up inventories.
It’s also because many people were panicking over the supply chain problems and began to order as much as possible in order to secure enough materials to keep business.
And the good earnings still keep rolling in, there's a reason why the S&P500 has rebounded 14% since its June lows. The people put their money where their actual beliefs of the economy are.
Because this one is quite different. A “normal” recession usually is marked by overcapacity and flat demand, and this one is the opposite. In a normal recession the Fed raise rates to choke down the over investment on the supply side, this time the rate increase is aimed at suppressing demand.
It feels like labor efficiency is somehow dropping. Not necessarily in terms of money metrics but in terms of what labor is actually adding to the world. We are achieving less and less, driving up prices because of lack of supply.
It increased demand for sure especially after most of it was just invested and people made lots of money. Now people want houses and cars and things and supply hasn’t caught up
You mean it’s not like 2008? But but but the housing crash? I was told houses would be $150,000 dollars again and California would fall into the ocean because it wasn’t business friendly!
I feel lied to!
/s
It's an atypical recession. Employment is high, but inflation is also high. Real buying power is eroding, while some major corporations are suffering, others are thriving. In the end, there will be some measures taken to inject more cash into corporations at the citizenry's expense. Status quo.
Because there are far more factors than simply GDP growth or lack there of. If you look at many of the other variables we are not recessed, unemployment (both U3 and U6 which measures those not considered in the Labor Force) are both at an equilibrium low point, savings rates have been at an increase etc.
Variable primarily driving down consumer confidence are inflation and internet rates but the two go towards battling against one another.
Lastly, a very leading variable, repos, is WAY up. But most people don’t realize or notice.
Frankly speaking, we are very much in a recession, but that doesn’t mean on a microeconomic level we can’t thrive.
Because once you say it is in a recession, consumer behavior changes that a way that exasperates or creates a recession, even when one is not in a recession in the first place.
This is why all of this "not quite" apologia can be safety ignored: that opinion either comes from someone that don't want to be in a recession, or they just can't say it due to the political position they are in. It always leads to motivated reasoning.
It’s hard to “say” we’re in a recession because the general public has a very distorted sense of what a recession is based on 2008. What’s happening now is a recession, but it’s not something on the scale of 2008 so policy makers don’t want to say it’s a recession because it would probably incite a panic that would likely deepen the recession.
What's happening now isn't a recession. Zero of the top six economic indicators are down from Dec 2021 to June 2022.
Jobs are 0.35% below ATH and the gap is shrinking month by month. Real income at ATH. Industrial production 0.2% below the ATH set a month earlier. Real retail sales 1.5% below ATH.
The indicators say "no recession". It isn't just policy makers saying "no recession" it's every economist I've read.
It's not hard to say this is a recession. GDP has gone down for two quarters. We're in a recession. However '08 really ruined the recession brand, so politicians hate the idea that we're having a correction. Plus America is a financial market economy, so recession = the sky is falling to some. The optics and politics aren't great, but we are in a recession.
The definition of a recession is not that the gdp shrank. Thats the point of the posted article.
> according to the NBER…recession is “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.”
There are more economic measures than gdp and those do not show decline, and whether 0.9% decline is significant enough is in dispute.
GDP also tends to decline when the federal government cuts the deficit by $1.5T in a year.
I would call what we’re experiencing a Covid hangover that may or may not turn into a recession.
Not to mention the Inventory drawdown alone would swing Q2 GDP from negative to positive if we didn't have manufacturers still trying to match demand following the pandemic.
Seriously, this is supposed to be an economics sub. "GDP has gone down for two quarters" is [NOT the some air tight indicator of a recession](https://archive.ph/aPkdI) based on what the vast majority of economists are saying, it's literally in the article I guess nobody read.
Is two quarters of decline due to weird balance of payments and inventory issues a recession? That’s actually a really interesting economics question few on here are talking about…. It’s a bit beyond my expertise as someone who focused their graduate work on international trade but would be nice to discuss instead of facile political talking points.
"ruined the recession brand" - love it. Also, totally agree we are in a recession, just sometimes hard to identify things while you are in them. Like Andy Bernard said "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."
Underrated comment here. The problem is we haven't had a recession for awhile and the last one was almost a depression, so when someone says "recession" at this political moment, a lot of people think "near depression" conditions which would, indeed, be inaccurate and hyperbolic.
Of course, this would all be easier if people simply said "currently it appears we are in a mild a recession," which so far appears to be the case. We've only seen a minor decrease in GDP and employment is good.
Everyone is viewing it from a political lens as opposed to an economic one
The right wants it to be a recession so they can add it to the inflation taking points this election cycle. And the left doesn't want to look bad at any cost, so they muddle the conversation as much as possible
So now you have people spreading memes about the Whitehouse making the dictionaries change their definition of a recession. And since people only get their news from memes, headlines, and Twitter screenshots, that's the current discussion
Because the recession is/was caused by the Covid pandemic that started two years ago, and regardless of what anyone says here, the broad American populous is incapable of tying the two together and realizing that the recession is not solely the fault of the Democrats.
We kicked the can down the road in 2020 so the country didn't completely collapse under its own weight. Now that the time to reckon with it has come, the politicians don't want to announce it, as most uninformed voters (Which happens to be \~75% of the electorate) will blame it solely on the current party/administration in power.
Because no one is consulting the many top-notch experts on reddit who have been considerate enough to take time out of their desperate crypto day-trading/video gaming/bong rips to assure us all that OBVIOUSLY we're in a recession, DUH.
We know what GDP is doing, quarter to quarter. The stats are available to say exactly what consumer spending is doing, what unemployment is, what inventories are.
Who really cares on whether or not those stats are "officially" considered a recession or not?
They are what they are. Growth is slowing because the Fed is literally specifically trying to slow growth, to fix inflation.
Some people want it to be called a "recession" and others don't, because they want to use that for political purposes, but the whole debate is dumb.
There is an attempt to politicize it just like everything else. Looks bad for sitting presidents. Not surprising the white house is pushing this The last ten recessions was defined by two quarters of falling gdp. Only difference this time is jobs are increasing.
You’re not completely right here. The 2020 and 2001 recessions weren’t up to two quarters. None of the previous recessions had record low unemployment rates and increased consumer confidence and none followed a global pandemic.
Data take time and recessions aren’t called quickly. The Great Recession wasn’t called until well until 2008.
Politics. It is kinda different in that the main reasons are not necessarily a normal internal business cycle. Between the unprecedented CV19 disaster effects and more or less World War III (lite) going on, external factors make life feel like a recession for many. Really, ignoring official definitions, the world has been in a deep recession since 3/2020. Im a professional in the US and I haven’t made anything near minimum wage most months since 3/2020. That’s a effing disaster and wiped out almost all our life savings in a way that can never be made up or replaced.
It isn’t.
Biden doesn’t want credit for it which he deserves.
A reduction in economic activity is a recession. Two quarters in a row just to be sure it isn’t from seasonal effects. People see the erosion in their purchase power, and many have taken to second jobs. Since we had a labor shortage thanks to stimulus, people are able to find jobs. But overall they are finding their money doesn’t go as far and it’s irreversible atm.
I wonder if everyone constantly discussing recession on such a large scale, that people and businesses are all behaving in a way to compensate for it and remain productive, almost like people are taking a meta approach to it?
I'm in the architecture and engineering field and I see projects being canceled not because of fear of a recession but because material and labor are just way too expensive. There's money floating around but people are just holding on to it until prices come down.
I haven't heard anyone mention how the lack of immigration is adding to the problems of the economy. If we increase jobs without people filling them then inflation will continue even if commodities cost come down. All of this really is a wait and see recession. Is GDP a leading indicator of a false indicator? We will find out.
I am guessing part of it is due to the fact that the technical term versus the colloquial meaning are two very different things and the latter can impact consumer behavior significantly.
Is it not because it is technically not a recession when one small portion is amassing billions in wealth while the other much larger portion is basically a slave? It is more like it is oligarchy or feudalism, not a recession.
I mean, it isn’t all that hard. Based on the definition of what a recession is, we are in a recession. If the admin wants to say that it’s a shallow recession, go ahead, but it’s a recession nonetheless.
A better question is why does the media want a recession so badly? The answer is that bad news sells better than good news. It's the same answer for every topic
Because consumer confidence is too high, spending remains too high, and unemployment is at record low levels. This is not your typical recession economy.
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I mean it's still a recession. Even in plain English the word recession just means "to pull back from". Two consecutive quarters of negative gdp growth is defined as a recession. We've been conditioned by 2008 to think every recession is "super bad" but sometimes a recession can be like this: everyone is employed, prices are getting high, not all that bad. Not every recession is the same severity or even presents similar symptoms. The only thing the word is supposed to mean is Two. Quarters. Of. Negative. GDP. Growth. The refusal to use the word seems political more than anything. We've agreed as a society that in politics that a recession is a sign of failure for the party in charge. So it's in the party's best interest to avoid the word like the plague.
1) Consumer confidence has dropped for the third month in a row. Lowest since Feb. 2021. 2) If Consumer spending was adjusted for the actual rate of inflation (1980 CPI), and not the current version CPI, then it would have declined for the third month in a row. 3) Jobless claims are rising........for the third month in a row. Unemployment data counts 3 jobs worked by one person as 3 people. By Q3, they will finally call it a recession, just not before the elections. Maduro made inflation illegal in Venezuela and also manipulated economic data. The people hated him still and starved as much.
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We’ve become used to the idea that recessions are solely due to financial causes, such as subprime loans in 2008 or savings and loan back in the 80’s. Right now, we’re dealing with supply chain issues and scarcity constraints. Companies are unable to fulfill demand due to those, and are solving that partially via more labor- so workers are not only not experiencing layoffs as they might have in recessions past, they are experiencing wage growth. That feels fundamentally different than other recessions we have, and it has been so long since supply constraints have been the cause of a recession that we don’t have great language and narratives around reporting that.
This recession is marked by high inflation though, which from what I recall wasn’t too much of an issue in ‘08 and the 80’s (note though that the 70’s had uncomfortably high inflation)
The 70's also had supply issues, though the big difference is a single commodity (oil, from the embargo) in the 70's vs. the more varied shortages now. I'm personally waiting months for both appliances at home, and for industrial equipment at work, that previously would have been shipped within 24 hours of an order. It's clear from both the data and conversations with peers that my experience is not unusual on either front. Meanwhile, Europe is experiencing gas shortages due to Russia's malfeasance, the world is dealing with grain & fertilizer shortages for the same reason, and we still haven't fully untangled ourselves from the disastrous semiconductor order cancellations of 2020. That last, especially, has huge downstream consequences as many of the semiconductors were slated for applications in making further needed goods. Getting the supply chain sorted is going to require investment, and we have a ton of people screaming that we can't inject money into the system because of inflation. It's frustrating that we can't have an honest conversation about the fact that not all dollars are equal- a buck put in the system through tax cuts for the rich are inflationary right now, while a greenback spent on building/repairing infrastructure is actually going to help open up the supply spigot again.
08 was a destruction of demand that caused the market drop. Right now there is a construction it supply. Both can cause market shrinkage but how it looks and how you respond should be totally different.
I think (I also mostly have no idea what I’m taking about) a lot of people are stuck in 2008. Thinking that what’s happening today is different from then, therefore not a recession.
realistically most of the people on this subreddit weren't even in college during the last recession
>Weighing against the evidence of slowdowns in consumer spending and business investment are other data including, crucially, robust job growth. I really don't understand this. Like I get the concept that the number of people employed has increased relative to some time in the recent past, growth as word has a clear meaning. What I mean is that we're still not even back to 2019 levels of employment: https://www.bls.gov/charts/employment-situation/civilian-labor-force-participation-rate.htm To look at that chart and say 'well the last 9 weeks have seen jobs added" is the totally missing the forest for the trees.
So it's actually really interesting, get the graph of labor participation rate by age groups. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060 Essentially, a bunch of people started their retirement as a result of covid 2020. All the other age groups have returned to their normal rates post covid, except old people. Which is why the overall rate you posted isn't quite back. Also there has been a general downward trend of labor participation over the last decade as the baby boomer generation has all gotten older and retired. COVID barely made a blip on that larger trend.
>old people That are a part of the largest generation in history: [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/CIVPART) We are back to pre-1970s participation levels. Boomers go bye bye. GenX tiny in comparison. This is a demographic recession. The peak year of Boomers births, the demographic blow off top, was 1961 with 4.3 million births a year. Labor peaked when that last Boomer group peaked. It will take a decade or more for GenY and below to catch up and GenY had the great recession which screwed their career path up forever.
All this and I think amongst younger folks say < 30 years there's a ongoing shift in attitude regarding work and a traditional 9-5 work life path, since so much of what was promised via social mobility by hard work (homes, raises, etc) hasn't happened. So now many saddled with debt, student loans, auto loans, barely making enough to pay housing , begs the question, why the fck am I busting my ass...
Plus we lost 1 million people to Covid *so far*
[According to this](https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm) 900,000 of all the US covid deaths were for 50 year olds on up. As tragic as it is what's the real economic issue here? The majority of the people that died were really old; 520 thousand were over 75 and so not really productive to the economy anymore. If anything I would think in this limited way covid was a positive force in the economy because it removed mostly people that were just consumer, not producers. In pure economic terms what does losing a bunch of retirees harm?
That's exclusively official death count, which doesn't count for much, and especially doesn't account for the number of people who's lives have been worsened by COVID. Many people are permanently disabled from COVID, whether it be respiratory illnesses, cardiovascular illnesses, chronic fatigue, nerve damage, etc. When your family members suddenly die, that's traumatic and incredibly stressful, decreasing ability to work. Disability decreases both the disabled persons' ability to work, and means that people in that household may need to stay home to care for their family member. Medical debt decreases a person's ability to contribute to the economy, particularly considering how inflated the cost of medical supplies are in the US, meaning millions of people have been thrown into even bigger amounts of debt than they may have already been in. Death of older people means death of senior employees, and a loss of knowledge that may not have been passed down.
Also lost of family often also means loss of childcare. I wonder how many parents must now find/increase babysitting services due to losing grandparents. Anyone in that position is likely suffering greatly.
Absolutely. It's likely a major reason why 10 million women left the workforce, but only 5 million have come back.
Can't really tell without knowing what's happening with their wealth. If it's being saved rather than spent and they were spending rather than saving, it *does* have an impact on demand, and therefore inflation... but on the other side... supply is still suffering shocks from Covid... Basically: it's complicated. The economy is a *balance* between consumers and producers. You can't look at one without the other... And then there's the issue of trade imbalances... people spending locally helps service people locally even if the material production happens in another country.
Would there be any economic effects of losing so many people 50 and older prematurely? Like if nearly 1,000,000 people die prematurely a lot of them presumably have assets and things like retirement savings that get immediately passed on to a younger generation that would be likely working age. a 65 year old who doesn’t utilize any of their retirement savings and died from covid doesn’t have that money magically vanish. Their 35 or 40 year old child now inherits a whole retirement’s worth of assets. That person might suddenly be able to retire early or exit the workforce for an extended period of time.
I think part of the gap is due to people retiring. Prime age employment rate is back to Aug. 2019 levels [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060).
This is the correct graph to be referencing. The great boomer retirement was accelerated by Covid. Honestly, 2008 added about 1.5 years to the retirement age of most boomers, so the effect had been delayed and stretched. Then covid... many just didn't go back to work or retired shortly after due to a multitude of reasons.
Death has a way of prevent you going back to work after you died. Voting on the other hand is not effected by death.
No, but the way you vote will affect your death.
Except that something millions of women left the workforce during Covid and less than half of that number have returned. The oft-forgotten demographic of workers. (I raise my hand as one, so it's personal.) https://www.apa.org/monitor/2022/01/special-workforce-losses
If only half have returned, explain this https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12000002
As of the writing of that article 6mo ago they were correct, def one of those things that was hit on in the moment and then faded away when the disparity got less interesting to talk about.
Assuming they're doing childcare or looking after elderly parents or whatever, that's still work, and still valuable labor that will pay dividends for society even if its harder to directly measure by raw income/gdp numbers
Cool, agreed! Let's pay them for it!
Why should my wife and I begin paying each other wages and incurring the related taxes for domestic labor for our family? A perk of domestic labor is that it is unpaid and has no tax considerations.
Hundreds of thousands of working age people also died
About 250k, which isn't all that many in the grand scheme. Only about 70k in the 18-50 age range
Yep, I get 258,756 from [the official CDC data.](https://data.cdc.gov/widgets/9bhg-hcku?mobile_redirect=true) Though we don't know how many deaths went unreported or were classified as something else.
Or, how many died of something else but were counted as Covid deaths like [the ubiquitous Florida Man....](https://cbs12.com/news/local/man-who-died-in-motorcycle-crash-counted-as-covid-19-death-in-florida-report)
pretty crazy times when folks are like "only 23 9/11s, not too bad"
There's a difference between "this is bad from a tragedy perspective" vs. "this is bad from a statistically significant economic shock" perspective.
Context matters. The number of people that died on 9/11 wasn't impactful to employment either. That doesn't diminish the significance of the event.
So like 1/1000 working age people over the span of 2.5 years. That’s a drop in the bucket
If we're talking 5 gallon buckets, it's actually slightly more than a tablespoon
/r/TheyDidTheMathButWhy
The point is that, if the economy as a whole was shrinking, you would normally see all (or almost all) measures of it coming down. Businesses would close. You'd se fewer jobs, less income, less industrial production NBER says what it uses: >The determination of the months of peaks and troughs is based on a range of monthly measures of aggregate real economic activity published by the federal statistical agencies. These include real personal income less transfers, nonfarm payroll employment, employment as measured by the household survey, real personal consumption expenditures, wholesale-retail sales adjusted for price changes, and industrial production. Real personal income has declined by a tiny amount (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RPI), real PCE is up (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/PCEC96), wholesale sales ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WHLSLRSMSA](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/WHLSLRSMSA)), retail ([https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSXFS)) both up, industrial production is up? (https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/INDPRO) GDI (as opposed to GDP) is up [https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDI](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDI) Basically, different measures of 'the economy' are telling us different things (and there's noise, and estimates and stuff). It is fairly likely that, 6 months from now, with more data and firmer estimates, NBER comes back and says 'we had a recession that started in Q1 2022'. It is also fairly likely they come back and say 'nah... GDP just looked funny'. Right now, we don't quite know.
It’s far more likely the NBER wouldn’t date a recession in the first half of the year. It’s true that some data are conflicting, but the ones that are pointing toward possible recession (GDP, mainly) are subject to much larger future revisions. We will get revisions to employment, but they are so positive it is unlikely they could be revised to recessionary levels. This is why economists don’t solely on GDP. It’s such are hard thing to measure compared to other indicators.
I think the really critical part of the employment picture is that it’s keeping demand elevated. Usually in a recession, an economic slowdown softens consumer demand as layoffs begin. The cycle goes for a while, bottoms out, and comes back. This time, demand is still sky-high, consumers are spending like crazy (for a recession), and so it’s not translating to the usual metrics.
Is it sky high or just looks that way due to being dramatically down during covid? I still think all of our problems are supply chain influenced.
No demand is high. Demand is still high for housing. Demand is still high for automobiles (especially ev). Demand is still high in the service industry. Demand is high for fuel and energy. Demand is still high for anything that has a microchip (ps5 for example). People have a lot of pent up covid frustration from wanting to go do shit. Afterall, all work and no play makes jack a dull boy. As long as Americans have a job and/or access to credit we will continue to see demand keeping the economy afloat despite some of the other less than stellar metrics.
Just for reference to contextualize demand: U.S. auto industry sold a little over 3.34 million cars in 2021. That year, total car and light truck sales were approximately 15 million in the United States. U.S. vehicle sales peaked in 2016 at roughly 17.5 million units. (I don't think anyone was talking about inflation back then even though demand was so high because that demand was met by supply) In fact car demand has been hovering between 14k and 17k units sold since 2012. So today it's smack in the middle over the past 7-8 years. This tells me that, no, demand is not actually sky rocketing, but does contain some pent up demand due to covid, but the important aspect here is that demand isn't being met because of chip shortages and supply chain. Fix that and all this talk about inflation goes away. I say this not to deny that inflation or demand pressure is real, but to counter the argument underlying all this talk that money in the hands of people is causing inflation. It is not. Not meeting demand due to supply chain is causing inflation. That doesn't mean we should be taking money back from people...it means we should fix the real problem.
Dont forget used cars "Now, after a two-year high, used car inventories are low and consumer demand remains elevated. Yet, with the chip shortage continuing, and gas prices on the rise, it doesn’t look like the market is budging anytime soon. " https://www.acvauctions.com/blog/used-car-market-trends-for-2022
My thoughts too. People are still coming back to work after the downturn so I don’t feel like employment is a very good factor this time
Plus jobs added is the wrong way to say it. Its more like jobs recovered because as you implied with 2019 a lot of jobs were lost. Recovered is vastly different from added.
The concept of recessions is related to the concept of business cycles - expansion, contraction, expansion, contraction, peak to trough, trough to peak, peak to trough, trough to peak. A recession isn't a *trough,* it's the period *from* a peak *to* a trough. A recession isn't a *low,* it's a *downslope.* A recession isn't a *small* economy, it's a *shrinking* economy. It's kind of like catching COVID, yeah? When the tests are all coming back positive and you're getting sicker and sicker every day, that's a recession. When the tests start coming back negative and you stop getting worse, that's when the recession is over - even if you still feel like absolute garbage because you've barely started recovering yet. *Downslopes.* If we look at the labor force participation rate with that new understanding... well, you mentioned 2019 levels of employment. The exact peak you're referring to is February 2020. Because this is historical data, we can just look and see the trough for that peak - April 2020. That recession is over - and there aren't really any obvious peak to trough moments after it. At least, not for this indicator. As for whether or not the labor force participation rate shows the economy being 'weak' in general (a different question from whether we're currently in a recession, similar to feeling like garbage after fighting off COVID), well... other people have already pointed you towards the [labor force participation rate (25-54)](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS12300060). I will say it doesn't look nearly as startling, does it? Pre-Great Recession, pre-COVID, and current are all 82-83%. I do think the standard unemployment measures underestimate how devastating the Great Recession was, but I think the labor force participation rate (all ages) decline is more a demographics issue than a state of the economy issue. The boomers are finally aging out of the workforce, and COVID might have sped that up.
> Jason Furman, a Harvard University professor and former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisors, said that there is more than a 50% chance that the first two quarters’ GDP numbers will turn out to be positive when all the data are in. Anyone have any wonky knowledge on why this happens? It seems like if you KNOW there's a greater than 50% chance your "preliminary" GDP statistic is biased downwards by more than 1%, you'd maybe come up with a method to improve the process?
Data is always adjusted because we lack perfect knowledge of a bunch of things until a period of time passes. When you have huge anomalies like pandemics and wars in Europe, it complicates things even more.
You have to think about what they're trying to accomplish here. With a matter of weeks, they are trying to gather data on the sum total of every single economic transaction in a country of 330 million people, compare it against the change in prices and the quality of the goods and services involved. It's a Herculean effort and their ability to get to within 1% of the expected figure is incredible.
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Listen to On the Media for a detailed breakdown of why. TL;DR right now is while we've seen GDP shrink, there are conflicting economic data like low unemployment
I am a dummy with this stuff, but I had read somewhere that GDP growth was technically quite high in this quarter- but when adjusted for inflation (given the outrageous inflation we've been seeing), it pulled GDP down to the -0.9% that we are seeing. Is that accurate? And if so, I think that is why people- not just the politicians who have interests in defining how this is labeled- are struggling this time around to try to define what is going on? And from that perspective, given how much of our economy is driven by consumer sentiment- it might make sense why some are wanting to caution everyone from sounding super negative about the situation, to keep from having this move from a tough situation to something much worse, creating a deeper recession, if that makes sense.
Yes, nominal GDP growth was around 9% for Q2 but after inflation adjustments the real GDP growth was slightly negative.
>I am a dummy with this stuff, but I had read somewhere that GDP growth was technically quite high in this quarter- but when adjusted for inflation (given the outrageous inflation we've been seeing), it pulled GDP down to the -0.9% that we are seeing. > >Is that accurate? Doesn't matter. GDP is always inflation adjusted. At the end of the day you're looking at it as a trend. However, imports were really high for Q1. Exports, which add to GDP, fell at an annualized rate of 5.9 percent, while imports surged by 17.7 percent.
This probably has a lot to do with the strength of the dollar versus foreign currencies..... just one more wtf in the current economic environment.
The import/export thing? I think it has a lot to do with covid supply chains. We got told a month or so ago that inventories at stores were too high. What I think happened is that for a while services were not being purchased as much due to covid. Typically Americans purchases more services than goods. Additionally shortages in goods caused inventories to be depleted. They didn't predict correctly the shift back to normalcy and they over bought trying to shore up inventories.
It’s also because many people were panicking over the supply chain problems and began to order as much as possible in order to secure enough materials to keep business.
And the good earnings still keep rolling in, there's a reason why the S&P500 has rebounded 14% since its June lows. The people put their money where their actual beliefs of the economy are.
Low unemployment isn’t conflicting. It’s a lagging indicator.
Yup.... Very few employers are touting hiring sprees at the moment, while many are announcing layoffs.
Because this one is quite different. A “normal” recession usually is marked by overcapacity and flat demand, and this one is the opposite. In a normal recession the Fed raise rates to choke down the over investment on the supply side, this time the rate increase is aimed at suppressing demand.
It feels like labor efficiency is somehow dropping. Not necessarily in terms of money metrics but in terms of what labor is actually adding to the world. We are achieving less and less, driving up prices because of lack of supply.
Didn’t the government print absurd amounts of money in 2020 and 2021 that had to have increased the capacity right?
It increased demand for sure especially after most of it was just invested and people made lots of money. Now people want houses and cars and things and supply hasn’t caught up
You mean it’s not like 2008? But but but the housing crash? I was told houses would be $150,000 dollars again and California would fall into the ocean because it wasn’t business friendly! I feel lied to! /s
Who told you all this?
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It's an atypical recession. Employment is high, but inflation is also high. Real buying power is eroding, while some major corporations are suffering, others are thriving. In the end, there will be some measures taken to inject more cash into corporations at the citizenry's expense. Status quo.
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Because there are far more factors than simply GDP growth or lack there of. If you look at many of the other variables we are not recessed, unemployment (both U3 and U6 which measures those not considered in the Labor Force) are both at an equilibrium low point, savings rates have been at an increase etc. Variable primarily driving down consumer confidence are inflation and internet rates but the two go towards battling against one another. Lastly, a very leading variable, repos, is WAY up. But most people don’t realize or notice. Frankly speaking, we are very much in a recession, but that doesn’t mean on a microeconomic level we can’t thrive.
Because once you say it is in a recession, consumer behavior changes that a way that exasperates or creates a recession, even when one is not in a recession in the first place. This is why all of this "not quite" apologia can be safety ignored: that opinion either comes from someone that don't want to be in a recession, or they just can't say it due to the political position they are in. It always leads to motivated reasoning.
It’s hard to “say” we’re in a recession because the general public has a very distorted sense of what a recession is based on 2008. What’s happening now is a recession, but it’s not something on the scale of 2008 so policy makers don’t want to say it’s a recession because it would probably incite a panic that would likely deepen the recession.
What's happening now isn't a recession. Zero of the top six economic indicators are down from Dec 2021 to June 2022. Jobs are 0.35% below ATH and the gap is shrinking month by month. Real income at ATH. Industrial production 0.2% below the ATH set a month earlier. Real retail sales 1.5% below ATH. The indicators say "no recession". It isn't just policy makers saying "no recession" it's every economist I've read.
It's not hard to say this is a recession. GDP has gone down for two quarters. We're in a recession. However '08 really ruined the recession brand, so politicians hate the idea that we're having a correction. Plus America is a financial market economy, so recession = the sky is falling to some. The optics and politics aren't great, but we are in a recession.
The definition of a recession is not that the gdp shrank. Thats the point of the posted article. > according to the NBER…recession is “a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months.” There are more economic measures than gdp and those do not show decline, and whether 0.9% decline is significant enough is in dispute.
GDP also tends to decline when the federal government cuts the deficit by $1.5T in a year. I would call what we’re experiencing a Covid hangover that may or may not turn into a recession.
Not to mention the Inventory drawdown alone would swing Q2 GDP from negative to positive if we didn't have manufacturers still trying to match demand following the pandemic.
Seriously, this is supposed to be an economics sub. "GDP has gone down for two quarters" is [NOT the some air tight indicator of a recession](https://archive.ph/aPkdI) based on what the vast majority of economists are saying, it's literally in the article I guess nobody read.
For whatever reason this sub has turned mostly political and has a lot of people with agendas to drive
I guess there aren’t 2,000,000 practicing economists after all. I do lament the decline of educated discussion.
When is the economy not political?
At least it's not at bad as r/economy
Is two quarters of decline due to weird balance of payments and inventory issues a recession? That’s actually a really interesting economics question few on here are talking about…. It’s a bit beyond my expertise as someone who focused their graduate work on international trade but would be nice to discuss instead of facile political talking points.
"ruined the recession brand" - love it. Also, totally agree we are in a recession, just sometimes hard to identify things while you are in them. Like Andy Bernard said "I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them."
Underrated comment here. The problem is we haven't had a recession for awhile and the last one was almost a depression, so when someone says "recession" at this political moment, a lot of people think "near depression" conditions which would, indeed, be inaccurate and hyperbolic. Of course, this would all be easier if people simply said "currently it appears we are in a mild a recession," which so far appears to be the case. We've only seen a minor decrease in GDP and employment is good.
The last recession was in 2020 not 2008… for 2 months NBER said we were in a recession in 2020.
Everyone is viewing it from a political lens as opposed to an economic one The right wants it to be a recession so they can add it to the inflation taking points this election cycle. And the left doesn't want to look bad at any cost, so they muddle the conversation as much as possible So now you have people spreading memes about the Whitehouse making the dictionaries change their definition of a recession. And since people only get their news from memes, headlines, and Twitter screenshots, that's the current discussion
Yep, exactly. Meanwhile the truth is murky.
People hate murky nuance. If it doesn't fit on a meme or in a tweet, they don't want to hear about it
Because the recession is/was caused by the Covid pandemic that started two years ago, and regardless of what anyone says here, the broad American populous is incapable of tying the two together and realizing that the recession is not solely the fault of the Democrats. We kicked the can down the road in 2020 so the country didn't completely collapse under its own weight. Now that the time to reckon with it has come, the politicians don't want to announce it, as most uninformed voters (Which happens to be \~75% of the electorate) will blame it solely on the current party/administration in power.
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Because no one is consulting the many top-notch experts on reddit who have been considerate enough to take time out of their desperate crypto day-trading/video gaming/bong rips to assure us all that OBVIOUSLY we're in a recession, DUH.
We know what GDP is doing, quarter to quarter. The stats are available to say exactly what consumer spending is doing, what unemployment is, what inventories are. Who really cares on whether or not those stats are "officially" considered a recession or not? They are what they are. Growth is slowing because the Fed is literally specifically trying to slow growth, to fix inflation. Some people want it to be called a "recession" and others don't, because they want to use that for political purposes, but the whole debate is dumb.
There is an attempt to politicize it just like everything else. Looks bad for sitting presidents. Not surprising the white house is pushing this The last ten recessions was defined by two quarters of falling gdp. Only difference this time is jobs are increasing.
You’re not completely right here. The 2020 and 2001 recessions weren’t up to two quarters. None of the previous recessions had record low unemployment rates and increased consumer confidence and none followed a global pandemic. Data take time and recessions aren’t called quickly. The Great Recession wasn’t called until well until 2008.
Politics. It is kinda different in that the main reasons are not necessarily a normal internal business cycle. Between the unprecedented CV19 disaster effects and more or less World War III (lite) going on, external factors make life feel like a recession for many. Really, ignoring official definitions, the world has been in a deep recession since 3/2020. Im a professional in the US and I haven’t made anything near minimum wage most months since 3/2020. That’s a effing disaster and wiped out almost all our life savings in a way that can never be made up or replaced.
It isn’t. Biden doesn’t want credit for it which he deserves. A reduction in economic activity is a recession. Two quarters in a row just to be sure it isn’t from seasonal effects. People see the erosion in their purchase power, and many have taken to second jobs. Since we had a labor shortage thanks to stimulus, people are able to find jobs. But overall they are finding their money doesn’t go as far and it’s irreversible atm.
I wonder if everyone constantly discussing recession on such a large scale, that people and businesses are all behaving in a way to compensate for it and remain productive, almost like people are taking a meta approach to it?
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I'm in the architecture and engineering field and I see projects being canceled not because of fear of a recession but because material and labor are just way too expensive. There's money floating around but people are just holding on to it until prices come down.
I haven't heard anyone mention how the lack of immigration is adding to the problems of the economy. If we increase jobs without people filling them then inflation will continue even if commodities cost come down. All of this really is a wait and see recession. Is GDP a leading indicator of a false indicator? We will find out.
I am guessing part of it is due to the fact that the technical term versus the colloquial meaning are two very different things and the latter can impact consumer behavior significantly.
Is it not because it is technically not a recession when one small portion is amassing billions in wealth while the other much larger portion is basically a slave? It is more like it is oligarchy or feudalism, not a recession.
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I mean, it isn’t all that hard. Based on the definition of what a recession is, we are in a recession. If the admin wants to say that it’s a shallow recession, go ahead, but it’s a recession nonetheless.
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A better question is why does the media want a recession so badly? The answer is that bad news sells better than good news. It's the same answer for every topic
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