It’s All Over but the Recession

The yield curve has a solid inversion right now, indicating we will have a recession in the next 12 to 18 months. Given the accuracy of this indicator, you can pretty much put it in the bank.

Over the last 70 years, we essentially have never had a recession without an inversion and never had an inversion without a recession. We call that an accurcate indicator with high power.

The only question now is how bad will the recession be. A lot of that will depend on how persistent inflation is and how high the Fed needs to go. Given current labor market conditions are, the Fed will likely need to really tighten, negatively impacting areas of the economy that are already very weak.

Job Recovery Stalled Out

Initial Jobless Claims were close to 850,000 again today. Here’s how that compares to the rest of the year.

While the number looks great compared to March, this number is till 200,000 higher than ANY week pre-Covid.

The job market may be deteriorating here as we see more permanent job losses and colder weather starts to impact some service businesses again.

Please also note it has been 29 weeks since the first huge surge in claims. Many initials are past 26 weeks (the usual limit) so continuing claims will be less informative about job market health going forward.