A widely predicted recession never showed up. Now, economists are assessing what the unexpected resilience tells us about the future.
The recession America was expecting never showed up.
Many economists spent early 2023 predicting a painful downturn, a view so widely held that some commentators started to treat it as a given. Inflation had spiked to the highest level in decades, and a range of forecasters thought that it would take a drop in demand and a prolonged jump in unemployment to wrestle it down.
Instead, the economy grew 3.1 percent last year, up from less than 1 percent in 2022 and faster than the average for the five years leading up to the pandemic. Inflation has retreated substantially. Unemployment remains at historic lows, and consumers continue to spend even with Federal Reserve interest rates at a 22-year high.
The divide between doomsday predictions and the heyday reality is forcing a reckoning on Wall Street and in academia. Why did economists get so much wrong, and what can policymakers learn from those mistakes as they try to anticipate what might come next?
Pay no mind to the widespread layoffs and skyrocketing prices.
What’s your source?
Recent December data shows unemployment rate at 3.7% with 199,000 added jobs:
https://www.cnbc.com/2023/12/08/jobs-report-november-2023-us-payrolls-rose-199000-in-november-unemployment-rate-falls-to-3point7percent.html
The multitude of headlines weve been seeing for months of companies laying off thousands at a time https://news.crunchbase.com/startups/tech-layoffs/
Thanks for the link. If I’m reading it correctly, the total number of tech layoffs for the whole 2023 was 191,000, which is less than the 199,000 new jobs added in just the single month of December 2023?
As someone that works in tech, it should be noted that many of those laid off were probably able to find work elsewhere. It’s a shitty market for tech right now, but there are jobs out there.
The industry that is really struggling is recruitment. Many people that I spoke to that were laid off from Amazon are still struggling to find work a year after losing their jobs. If you build a career around hiring in tech, and the industry goes into layoff-mode for 16 months, there’s not much demand for your skills.
Inflation being higher than wages?
Removed by mod
what kind of weird inflation rant it this. admitting that the price spikes are still around but inflation is under control, and that it’s actually a good thing that all the prices went up while my wages stayed the same, prices going down is a bad thing. No explanation, just because. Is it because the rich get less money to trickle down to us?
Rage bait bot comment ^
Remember 2008-2010?
Layoffs (especially in the tech industry) have been highly-publicized, not widespread. There’s a difference.
You shouldn’t be getting downvoted. It’s true. Tech companies went on a huge hiring spree during Covid. The layoffs don’t even bring employment anywhere close to before that hiring spree.
As long as the rich people are making more money, the economy is great. The poors don’t matter when it comes to the economy. We suffer when it’s doing well, we suffer worse when it’s doing poorly.