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Recession forecasts have been wrong for years. Here's why a 'perfect indicator' doesn't exist.

Yahoo Finance
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80% Informative

The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index signaled a recession in 2022 .

The highly regarded inverted yield curve recession indicator has been activated since November 2022 .

Most recently, the Sahm Rule , which measures short-term rises in unemployment, triggered its recession red flag in early August .

The National Bureau of Economic Research says a recession involves a "significant decline in economic activity".

Recession indicators that track economic data miss the larger fear Americans have when they think about recessions.

Steven Pearlstein won a Pulitzer prize for his work predicting the financial crisis of 2007/2008 .

Harvard economist Jason Furman joked that "almost every recession indicator has not survived the next recession".