August 5, 2022

You’d be hard-pressed now to find a recession in the rearview mirror. What’s down the road, though, is another story.

There is no historical precedent to indicate that an economy in recession can produce 528,000 jobs in a month, as the U.S. did during July. A 3.5% unemployment rate, tied for the lowest since 1969, is not consistent with contraction.

But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a recession ahead, and, ironically enough, it is the labor market’s phenomenal resiliency that could pose the broader economy’s biggest long-run danger. The Federal Reserve is trying to ease pressures on a historically tight jobs situation and its rapid wage gains in an effort to control inflation running at its highest level in more than 40 years.

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