In macroeconomics, the Sahm rule, or Sahm rule recession indicator, is a heuristic measure by the United States' Federal Reserve for determining when an economy has entered a recession. [1] It is useful in real-time evaluation of the business cycle and relies on monthly unemployment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). It is named after economist Claudia Sahm, formerly of the Federal Reserve and Council of Economic Advisors.
The Sahm rule originates from a chapter in the Brookings Institution's report on the use of fiscal policy to stabilize the economy during recessions. [2] The chapter, written by Sahm, proposes fiscal policy to automatically send stabilizing payments to citizens to boost economic well-being. Instead of relying on human intuition to determine when such payments should be sent, Sahm outlines a condition to trigger the payments. [3] The trigger suggested indicates an economy beginning a recession and is now known as the Sahm rule.
The Sahm rule was published by The St. Louis Federal Reserve bank's Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) system in October 2019. [4] [5] It is retroactively calculated to evaluate performance from past recessions. The recession rule is defined as:
Sahm Recession Indicator signals the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to its low during the previous 12 months. [6]
Relying on the change in unemployment from the previous 12 months means the natural rate of unemployment is seamlessly integrated. A rule relying on a fixed level of unemployment, in contrast, cannot take into account drifts caused by changes in demographics, technology, or labor market frictions. [7]
The rule only relies on a single data series, national unemployment, which is published monthly by the BLS. This differentiates the index from other recession indicators based on statistical models, which may rely on dozens of inputs. [8] Further, unemployment can be more easily understood than complex financial series. [9] [10]
The Sahm rule has received recognition by popular economics news sources. [11] [10] Its simplicity and low rate of false positives are attractive features.
While the Sahm rule indicates recessions sooner than the formal NBER recession indications, which can take anywhere from half to two years, it is by no means predictive. [12] The rule triggered approximately three months into each of the last several recessions, with the beginning of the recession retroactively determined by the NBER. [13]
In economics, a recession is a business cycle contraction that occurs when there is a general decline in economic activity. Recessions generally occur when there is a widespread drop in spending. This may be triggered by various events, such as a financial crisis, an external trade shock, an adverse supply shock, the bursting of an economic bubble, or a large-scale anthropogenic or natural disaster.
Monetarism is a school of thought in monetary economics that emphasizes the role of policy-makers in controlling the amount of money in circulation. It gained prominence in the 1970s, but was mostly abandoned as a direct guidance to monetary policy during the following decade because of the rise of inflation targeting through movements of the official interest rate.
Business cycles are intervals of general expansion followed by recession in economic performance. The changes in economic activity that characterize business cycles have important implications for the welfare of the general population, government institutions, and private sector firms. There are numerous specific definitions of what constitutes a business cycle. The simplest and most naïve characterization comes from regarding recessions as 2 consecutive quarters of negative GDP growth. More satisfactory classifications are provided by, first including more economic indicators and second by looking for more informative data patterns than the ad hoc 2 quarter definition.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is an American private nonprofit research organization "committed to undertaking and disseminating unbiased economic research among public policymakers, business professionals, and the academic community". The NBER is known for proposing start and end dates for recessions in the United States.
The early 2000s recession was a decline in economic activity which mainly occurred in developed countries. The recession affected the European Union during 2000 and 2001 and the United States from March to November 2001. The UK, Canada and Australia avoided the recession, while Russia, a nation that did not experience prosperity during the 1990s, began to recover from it. Japan's 1990s recession continued.
The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks that, along with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the United States' central bank. Missouri is the only state to have two main Federal Reserve Banks.
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Growth Recession is a term in economics that refers to a situation where economic growth is slow, but not low enough to be a technical recession, yet unemployment still increases.
The Great Moderation is a period in the United States of America starting from the mid-1980s until at least 2007 characterized by the reduction in the volatility of business cycle fluctuations in developed nations compared with the decades before. It is believed to be caused by institutional and structural changes, particularly in central bank policies, in the second half of the twentieth century.
See Business Cycle.
The Great Recession was a period of marked general decline observed in national economies globally, i.e. a recession, that occurred in the late 2000s. The scale and timing of the recession varied from country to country. At the time, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) concluded that it was the most severe economic and financial meltdown since the Great Depression. One result was a serious disruption of normal international relations.
The Depression of 1920–1921 was a sharp deflationary recession in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries, beginning 14 months after the end of World War I. It lasted from January 1920 to July 1921. The extent of the deflation was not only large, but large relative to the accompanying decline in real product.
The 1973–1975 recession or 1970s recession was a period of economic stagnation in much of the Western world during the 1970s, putting an end to the overall post–World War II economic expansion. It differed from many previous recessions by involving stagflation, in which high unemployment and high inflation existed simultaneously.
Unemployment in the United States discusses the causes and measures of U.S. unemployment and strategies for reducing it. Job creation and unemployment are affected by factors such as economic conditions, global competition, education, automation, and demographics. These factors can affect the number of workers, the duration of unemployment, and wage levels.
In the United States, the Great Recession was a severe financial crisis combined with a deep recession. While the recession officially lasted from December 2007 to June 2009, it took many years for the economy to recover to pre-crisis levels of employment and output. This slow recovery was due in part to households and financial institutions paying off debts accumulated in the years preceding the crisis along with restrained government spending following initial stimulus efforts. It followed the bursting of the housing bubble, the housing market correction and subprime mortgage crisis.
The United States entered a recession in 1990, which lasted 8 months through March 1991. Although the recession was mild relative to other post-war recessions, it was characterized by a sluggish employment recovery, most commonly referred to as a jobless recovery. Unemployment continued to rise through June 1992, even though a positive economic growth rate had returned the previous year.
Claudia Rae Sahm is an American economist, leading the Macroeconomic Research initiative of the Jain Family Institute. She was formerly director of macroeconomic policy at the Washington Center for Equitable Growth, and a Section Chief at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where she worked in various capacities from 2007 to 2019. Sahm specializes in macroeconomics and household finance. She is best known for the development of the Sahm Rule, a Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED) indicator for identifying recessions in real-time.
The Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Business Conditions Index is a coincident business cycle indicator used in macroeconomics in the United States. The index measures business activity, which may be correlated with periods of expansion and contraction in the economy. The primary and novel function of the ADS index stems from its use of high-frequency economic data and subsequent high-frequency updating, opposed to the traditionally highly-lagged and infrequently-published macroeconomic data such as GDP.
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