San Francisco Fed offers new method for monitoring U.S. recession

PANews reported on August 19th that researchers at the San Francisco Federal Reserve proposed a new recession warning indicator, providing economists with additional tools to assess whether the United States is likely to fall into a recession. This tool, called the Labor Market Stress Indicator (LMSI), reveals regional differences in the labor market by counting the number of states where unemployment rates have risen by at least 0.5 percentage points from their lowest level in the previous 12 months. The research report stated: "Whenever 30 or more states experience accelerating unemployment simultaneously, the national economy almost always enters a recession. The LMSI's transparent methodology—counting only states with accelerating unemployment rates—is easy to interpret and provides valuable insights into the geographical distribution of economic stress."