Everything is a 'Recession Indicator' Now

There are recession indicators everywhere for those with eyes to see.

Casual blazers. The return of pop punk. Kreayshawn. Logomania. Celine Phantom bags. Celebrities in commercials. Infinite Jest. Although these things appear to have little in common, they’ve all been dubbed ‘recession indicators’ on social media. While we are not technically in a recession—in May, J.P. Morgan Research reduced the probability of a 2025 U.S. and global recession from 60% to 40%— you wouldn’t know it by the state of the internet. Every time I open my phone, a flood of posts designating new cultural objects or phenomena recession indicators—sometimes joking, sometimes not. Just about anything can be a “recession indicator,” but they typically fall into one of two categories: a pop culture artefact from 15-20 years ago makes a mysterious return (e.g. The Devil Wears Prada 2), or someone engages in strange/out-of-character/cringe behaviour in order to save money.

Classically, a recession indicator is something a little less colourful. For example the Sahm Recession Indicator, developed by policy analyst Claudia Sahm, denotes a recession is around the corner “when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to the minimum of the three-month averages from the previous 12 months.” Not nearly as fun as people getting their nails done less, or strip club patrons leaving stingier tips.

Economists tend to call a recession after two or more quarters of negative GDP growth. The C.D. Howe Institute defines one as a "pronounced, persistent, and pervasive decline in aggregate economic activity.” Apparently, the conditions the US are experiencing at the moment constitute “stagflation-lite—growth running below trend coupled with inflation that is uncomfortably heading higher into year-end,” according to RBC In Canada, the forecast is worse thanks to tariff-related uncertainty, with both CIBC and TD banks predicting GDP shrinkage for the final two quarter of 2025. But for all the reassurances that we’re not headed into a recession, there’s little relief for those feeling the pinch.

Recession indicator posts first appeared in 2023, remained steady throughout 2024, and reached a fever pitch halfway through 2025. Even the ones that aren’t obviously jokes are still more vibes than substance. Rather, they’re a desperate attempt to affirm our own perception and experience of the world as it slips further and further away from anything that could be deemed familiar. Widespread economic anxiety has become a steady feature of life. At the moment, almost everyone I know—I’m not friends with any billionaires—is experiencing some form of precarity, whether that’s long-term unemployment, a sharp decline in freelance gigs, or feeling stuck in a job they hate because of the dire state of the job market. People who can’t afford a $1000 emergency expense see recession indicators everywhere, the same way a Catholic sees Jesus in a piece of burnt toast.

What all this talk of recession indicators suggests is that, rather that quibbling about the technicalities of whether we’re in a recession or not, we need to update and expand the definition of what a recession can be. Macroeconomic theory, as it was conceived, does not apply to the material conditions we are currently experiencing. The top 10% of earners are now responsible for 49.7% of all consumer spending, meaning we can live in a world where almost everyone is poor but there’s still no ‘recession.’ The wealth gap has become so pronounced that there’s basically an alternate reality for people with money, and yet still only one economy. Maybe we need to split them into two?

The rapacious greed of the wealthy has become untenable. Have you ever noticed that billionaires don’t build public libraries anymore, they only care about foam parties and going to space? This is why “abundance theory” is bullshit, by the way. There is no incentive for people who have a ton of money to pass it along in in a way that will make society better—let’s say fair wages, for example. George Eastman, the founder of Kodak, cultivated a work force of extremely loyal employees by paying fair wages and offering profit sharing. In 1919, he gave back 1/3 of his stock in the company to employees, then worth over $10 million. Modern rich people seem to ignore this edict, unintentionally activating a mass of Luigi Mangiones along the way.

There’s comfort in the idea of a recession indicator because it places us within the comfortable, familiar rhythm of boom and bust as opposed to something completely unprecedented; a violent, post apocalyptic world closer to the “Fear City” of a graffiti-covered 1970s New York City than we’d like to admit.

Recession indicators are both a way to have a laugh about the absurdity of the conditions we live under as well as a grassroots way of signalling distress. Hope and hopelessness exist in equal measure and I have no doubt that most people will attempt to do their best to continue existing within these constraints rather than change them. We need better political options, less children attempting to “secure the bag” in hopes of improving their own conditions, and zero billionaires.

Recently, I was seized with the sudden desire to listen to The Spirit Room by Michelle Branch from start to finish. Perhaps this nostalgic impulse to regress back to the pop culture of my preteen years is a powerful example of a recession indicator—or maybe the album just slaps.