If you happen to assume that’s Kevin Hassett opining, you’d be unsuitable. It’s really CEA Chair Ed Lazear on Could 8, 2008. NBER retrospectively decided that the enterprise cycle peak was December 2007, so {that a} recession was underway for 4 months by that point. At this time, NEC Chair Kevin Hassett acknowledged “I don’t see any signal of recession”
I keep in mind talking with a NBER Enterprise Cycle Relationship Committee (BCDC) member on the time of Lazear’s assertion, and I recall that member — in an enormous understatement — saying “I don’t assume that was a good suggestion”.
See the graph of key indicators adopted by the NBER BCDC (employment is among the prime two, the opposite is private earnings ex-current transfers) under. I additionally present in Determine 2 some different indicators.
Determine 1: Nonfarm Payroll incl benchmark revision employment from CES (daring blue), civilian employment with smoothed inhabitants controls (orange), industrial manufacturing (crimson), private earnings excluding present transfers in Ch.2017$ (daring mild inexperienced), manufacturing and commerce gross sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (mild blue), and month-to-month GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Supply: BLS by way of FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2025Q2 second launch, S&P International Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (9/2/2025 launch), and writer’s calculations.
Determine 2: Nonfarm Payroll early benchmark (NFP) (daring blue), civilian employment adjusted to NFP idea, with smoothed inhabitants controls (daring orange), manufacturing manufacturing (crimson), private earnings excluding present transfers in Ch.2017$ (daring inexperienced), actual retail gross sales (black), automobile miles traveled (inexperienced), freight transportation providers index (brown), and coincident index in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (teal bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Supply: Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Federal Reserve, BTS by way of FRED, BEA 2025Q2 second launch, and writer’s calculations.
See additionally Larry Kudlow in the present day.
