
This is one of Vox's Future Perfect predictions for 2023; they give it a 70% probability.
“The state of the economy is weird,” as New York’s Eric Levitz put it in a recent piece. The US keeps gaining jobs, and unemployment remains near historic lows. Inflation is declining, as are gas prices. Yet there is striking uniformity among economists and business executives that a recession is incoming.
What gives? Not the Federal Reserve, which has shown no sign that it is ready to significantly moderate interest rate increases, as it seeks to curb spending and investment and tame inflation. Pulling that off without thrusting the US into a recession would require orchestrating the kind of soft landing for the economy that the Fed hasn’t pulled off since 1994, as my Vox colleague Madeleine Ngo wrote recently. Every part of the economy that is vulnerable to high interest rates — home purchases, manufacturing output, retail sales — is already slumping.
Put the current data and the historical analogies together and it’s hard to believe that the US won’t avoid at least a mild recession next year, especially since economic decision-makers are all basically acting as though one is imminent.
(Vox)
Resolves according to Vox Future Perfect's judgment at the end of the year.
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