The Economy Grows, Recession in Sight

While the economy seems to still be growing, our media-based recession indicator says it will soon be in recession.

Note that when the media begins to beat the drum on an impending recession, a self-fulfilling prophecy may kick in as businesses hunker down in anticipation of the event. In this chart we show in blue the net references to "economic growth" vs "economic contraction".

When the references to Growth vs Contraction fall below 1 standard deviation of their historical average, this has always preceded an actual recession since at least 1968 in the U.S.