<story><title>US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)</title><url>https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-second-quarter-2022-advance-estimate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mywittyname</author><text>I agree that we are in a recession.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint?&lt;p&gt;Because the actual data is sending mixed signals.  People equate recessions with job losses, but job growth is still high and unemployment remains incredibly low.  Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong enough to push prices and profits to record levels.&lt;p&gt;GDP has long been criticized for being a poor metric for the economy.  But it&amp;#x27;s always been correlated enough with overall economic sentiment that it was Good Enough.  It looks like we&amp;#x27;ve finally gotten ourselves into a situation where  the edge case issues with GDP surface.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, not everyone feels recessions the same.  I was one of those people who benefited from the financial crisis, because I kept my job and lived in an apartment, so my income was going up while my costs went down.  That doesn&amp;#x27;t take away from the devastation it caused to other people.</text></item><item><author>partiallypro</author><text>I personally think we&amp;#x27;re in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance.&lt;p&gt;I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we&amp;#x27;re in recession while Fox, etc would say unemployment is still low which is what matters.&lt;p&gt;How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? It&amp;#x27;s really pathetic. People will go to the ends of the earth just to protect politicians. Worse, even if we&amp;#x27;re in recession it&amp;#x27;s pretty mild, so I don&amp;#x27;t even know why there is so much handwringing about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>phpisthebest</author><text>They are not mixed signals,  the data we use for signaling is flawed for the modern area&lt;p&gt;Take for example the U-3 unemployment number that you cite,  what is missing from that is Workforce Participation,  we have a pretty large drop-off in Work force participation which is leading to the false belief that employment is &amp;quot;fine&amp;quot;, and the quote &amp;quot;mix signal&amp;quot; of being in a recession while still having lower unemployment.&lt;p&gt;Completely absent from most of these older metrics is the &amp;quot;gig-economy&amp;quot; which is really screwing with the data IMO.&lt;p&gt;Then you have U-6 Unemployment increasing while U-3 is dropping,  I think U-3 is just a few months away from reversal and will start increasing soon&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&amp;gt;GDP has long been criticized for being a poor metric for the economy.&lt;p&gt;yes by MMT supporters that want to ignore the classic model of economics in favor of monetary manipulation for political purposes</text></comment>
<story><title>US Gross Domestic Product, Second Quarter 2022 (Advance Estimate)</title><url>https://www.bea.gov/news/2022/gross-domestic-product-second-quarter-2022-advance-estimate</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mywittyname</author><text>I agree that we are in a recession.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint?&lt;p&gt;Because the actual data is sending mixed signals.  People equate recessions with job losses, but job growth is still high and unemployment remains incredibly low.  Businesses equate recessions with reduced demand for goods and and services, yet demand remains strong enough to push prices and profits to record levels.&lt;p&gt;GDP has long been criticized for being a poor metric for the economy.  But it&amp;#x27;s always been correlated enough with overall economic sentiment that it was Good Enough.  It looks like we&amp;#x27;ve finally gotten ourselves into a situation where  the edge case issues with GDP surface.&lt;p&gt;Lastly, not everyone feels recessions the same.  I was one of those people who benefited from the financial crisis, because I kept my job and lived in an apartment, so my income was going up while my costs went down.  That doesn&amp;#x27;t take away from the devastation it caused to other people.</text></item><item><author>partiallypro</author><text>I personally think we&amp;#x27;re in recession and the reason is datapoints outside of this GDP print, what companies are saying, and the fact I know people that have been laid off already. What I find pathetic is that saying we are in a recession is now a political stance.&lt;p&gt;I think we all know that if a Republican were President the entire narrative would shift, with most of the press saying we&amp;#x27;re in recession while Fox, etc would say unemployment is still low which is what matters.&lt;p&gt;How did we get to a point where actual data can be outright denied or absorbed based on your political viewpoint? It&amp;#x27;s really pathetic. People will go to the ends of the earth just to protect politicians. Worse, even if we&amp;#x27;re in recession it&amp;#x27;s pretty mild, so I don&amp;#x27;t even know why there is so much handwringing about it.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>b0mbadilh0le</author><text>Macro Econ 101: Unemployment is a lagging indicator. Always has been. Always will be. It&amp;#x27;s why it was silly for them to keep touting it as a measure of the economy&amp;#x27;s health.&lt;p&gt;We could even enter a prolonged, severe recession  with low unemployment. How? Labor force participation. If it is low enough, there aren&amp;#x27;t jobs to cut.&lt;p&gt;Your last point is very valid, and much is a matter of perspective.&lt;p&gt;As far as mixed data... the only data throwing a contrary signal is unemployment, previously discussed. Inflation, rising interest rates, low consumer confidence, home prices turning over (speculative market areas currently), supply chain issues, and loss of wealth effect (markets have lost approximately $30 trillion this year), are all VERY recessionary.</text></comment>