That’s the title of an article reprinted at the Heritage.comby current BLS Commissioner-nominee EJ Antoni,
…an increasing number of indicators say the recession has arrived in the broader economy.
Typically, the economy grows as population and productivity increase, expanding total production, income and consumption. When that growth stagnates and reverses into contraction, we call it a recession. Production declines, and people have a lower quality of life.
The most common measure for growth or contraction in the economy is gross domestic product (GDP), which estimates total spending. It’s imperfect, like any estimate, but those imperfections are becoming highly problematic today.
The article was posted on August 22, 2024. For reference, here is the latest available data, including GDP.
Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll from CES (bold blue), civilian employment with smoothed population controls (orange), industrial production (red), Bloomberg consensus industrial production of 8/14, (red square), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2025Q2 second release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (9/2/2025 release), and author’s calculations.
Note that while industrial production was below recent peak as of August 2024, all other indicators continued to rise, including GDP. Now, these are the most recent-vintage numbers. To be fair, we should examine the numbers EJ Antoni had in real time. As it happens, I recorded these series at the time Dr. Antoni made his statement, in this August 2024 post.
Figure 2: Nonfarm Payroll (NFP) employment from CES (blue), NFP implied preliminary benchmark revision (bold blue), civilian employment (orange), implied civilian employment using CBO estimates of immigration (bold orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2024Q2 advance release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (8/1/2024 release), and author’s calculations.
Note as of end-August 2024, most series followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC) were still rising. While industrial production was declining, industrial output only comprises 17% of US GDP. On the other hand, as of end-August vintages, nonfarm payroll employment (even after preliminary benchmark downward revision!) and personal income excluding current transfers — the two key variables emphasized by the NBER BCDC — were rising! (Official civilian employment was flat, but if Dr. Antoni had been aware of the concerns regarding the population controls used by the BLS, then he would’ve noted the downweighting that should have been ascribed to this variable; sadly, he other was unaware, or chose not to mention, casting doubt on his reliability as an analyst of economic data).
