6 ms·

Ask HN: Is America in Recession?

25 points by register 10mo ago

Official numbers say the U.S. isn’t in recession—does real life feel different?

toomuchtodo 10mo ago
https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/state-economy-recession-risk/ https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/state-economy-recession-... https://x.com/Markzandi/status/1959686593276490220 https://x.com/Markzandi/status/1959686593276490220 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-is-keeping-the-us-economy-out-of-a-recession-100012367.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-is-keeping-the-us-economy-... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/us-consumer-sentiment-falls-to-one-of-lowest-levels-on-record https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/us-consum... | https://archive.today/aVfYZ https://archive.today/aVfYZ
WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
America is in a 4 income economy - the number of typical incomes needed to reliably meet basic bills (rent,transpo,food,utils) in most markets. I've lived thru 8 recessions, none had achieved this level of difficulty. None had so completely barred new entrants to society.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
  You mean the average number of full time jobs a single person needs to do to survive? or a couple? or a couple with kids?
  - WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
    Four incomes is the number of full-time jobs paying typical (most obtainable) wages. Presumably that would be 4 people. In my market: In mid 1990s one person could afford basic bills on typical, full-time wages. By 2007 living costs had doubled, most due to housing increases. For the next 12 years, wages and living costs mostly kept parity until 2020. During 2020, basic bills (mostly housing) rose and a typical wage-earning home required ~3 incomes as rents shot up. By late 2021 we were firmly at 4 incomes while everything shot up, especially housing and insurances.
    - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
      So for a single person you need 4 x ~$80k median income i.e. $320k for housing, health insurance, food etc. and other basics? Or are we talking federal minimum i.e. 4 x 14k = 56k. I guess you are talking min(min wage)
    - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
      The median wage earner in the US working one job is not homeless. Most homes are do not have three jobs between two adults.
      - WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
        > The median wage earner in the US working one job is not homeless. Median wage goalpost is up the field from the typical wage goalpost. The latter is the most obtainable income range, the sort that folks could once earn and stay housed. source: I once supported my young family on a typical wage Past that, homelessness and wage earning are generally at odds with each other. This is for a for a number of pronounced reasons, obvious and not. One of the less discernible reasons is that being unhoused makes employers uneasy; I once lost a job when my boss learned I was homeless.
- paulcole 10mo ago
  In your estimation what was the peak for ease of new entrance to society?
  - toomuchtodo 10mo ago
    1968. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-the-declining-value-of-the-u-s-federal-minimum-wage/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-the-declining-value-o...
    - paulcole 10mo ago
      Was 1968 awesome for everybody?
      - WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
        1968 was most awesome for white males. My mom managed to keep the family afloat on one income but she was working a higher-income job (w/ wages somewhat lower than the men below her). Winters could be tougher; we ate what we grew during the summer and didn't always have money for furnace fuel.
        digital_sawzall 10mo ago
        1968 was about 10 years after my grandparents migrated from Mexico to work at textile factories in the USA. They managed to buy a new house in a master planned community that was filled by other factory workers like themselves. He could never be mistaken for a white male, still he took english classes at night and started a side business as an umpire for baseball games and my grandmother started selling gold to the other factory workers during lunch time. They raised 3 kids, upgraded their house, bought a triplex, and a couple acre investment property. Could any factory worker do that today?
        bhag2066 10mo ago
        I'd love to hear from someone who denies this situation who is under the age of 35 and hear their arguments.
- ksaj 10mo ago
  Most people now forget that 50+ years ago, the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets. I read somewhere that when women started working in the war efforts, businesses took advantage and skewed home prices and whatnot to make it so women had no choice but to continue working. This worked out well, because women wanted to work and have similar social treatment as men. The issue then is that things kept skewing to the point where today a childless couple with high paying jobs can barely afford a vehicle and tiny apartment. This may or may not be accurate. But it is an interesting opinion that I've heard a number of times over the years.
  - kasey_junk 10mo ago
    “ the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets.” We don’t _forget_ this. We refute it. It’s not true. It’s a dream that real estate developers _sold_ that wasn’t real. In 1975 the women’s labor participation rate stood right around 50% its around 55% now [0]. In 1975 the US home ownership rate was 65%, its 65% now [1]. There were more families with no cars in the 70s than now. 1 and 2 car families were about the same rate (with more 2 car families now) but the big difference is how many more families have more than 2 cars now than then [2]. More stats for you: - food as a percentage of family budget is lower now than then (and the only reason its close is that we eat out way more now)[3] - houses are bigger now than then[4] - data on employee tenure doesn’t go back that far, but the data we do have to the 80s shows employee tenure hasn’t changed [5] There are lots of interesting economic challenges now, but _generally_ more people now are living better lives than then past economically. Anyone that sells you some story about some glorious past is lying to you for some reason. Home ownership rates are always the tell. The US had very stable home ownership rates in the 45% range until the New Deal efforts that started subsidizing like crazy home ownership. They rose in the post war era until about 1960 when they reached the mid 60s. They have fluctuated in a tight curve in that band since then. The home ownership rate is tightly correlated to mortgage rates, not generational values, and spikes in 2005 (right before the bubble burst) not in the dim past [6]. [0] https://blog.dol.gov/2023/03/15/working-women-data-from-the-past-present-and-future https://blog.dol.gov/2023/03/15/working-women-data-from-the-... [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N [2] https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_2015/chapter2/fig2_8 https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_20... [3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... [4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/a... [5] https://www.ebri.org/content/trends-in-employee-tenure-1983-2022 https://www.ebri.org/content/trends-in-employee-tenure-1983-... [6] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/research/files/harvard_jchs_homeownership_rate_layton_2021.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/research/fi...
- flag_fagger 10mo ago
  I’m really curious about the 08 recession. I definitely remember some of the fallout, but I was young and insulated from much of what it meant. My parents were also lucky enough to be employed with a mortgage. The one thing killing me in the economy is housing. Rent is up like crazy, but even more so rental criteria is ridiculous and competition is insane. And this is in a dilapidated rust belt city with maybe one industry propping up the entire economy. It’s a bit cheaper than when I was in Florida a few years back, but not by a ton. If I could figure out housing, all other problems would solve themselves, but it’s the one problem I can’t solve. My credit score took a battering during a long period of unemployment, and now I’m about as much of a pariah as a three time felon with two evictions, and I don’t even have an eviction. But how was in after the 2008 crisis. How hard was it to find rent them. If you had a job, and income were the rents still ridiculous? Or was it easy enough to find a place if you had money?
  - WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
    > Rent is up like crazy, but even more so rental criteria is ridiculous and competition is insane. Yes. People with solid jobs and money in the bank - people who've lived responsibly by saving before buying, almost no one will rent to them because of a zero credit score. And we know a bit about competition too. We got our current rental in 2021. It was a FB ad, with a crayon drawing of the layout. It was up for less than 2hrs and had 50 applicants. We got it by offering 6 mos in advance + heavy security deposit.
    - what 10mo ago
      People with solid jobs and money in the bank don’t generally have zero credit scores.
      - bruce511 10mo ago
        It'll vary by location, but typically credit scores are a measure of -credit- management, not -money- management. So people who are good at managing money, who tend to avoid credit, don't get a chance to demonstrate good -credit- management and hence end up with a low score. This is one reason why getting a credit card, using it, and then paying it off in full every month is a valuable thing to do. So for all the good money managers out there, be even smarter - build a good credit management history as a side effect of your good money management. That'll pay off in the long run.
fragmede 10mo ago
> GoFundMe CEO says the economy is so bad that more of his customers are crowdfunding just to pay for their groceries October 13th, 2025 https://fortune.com/2025/10/13/gofundme-ceo-economy-inflation-crowdfunding-groceries/ https://fortune.com/2025/10/13/gofundme-ceo-economy-inflatio...
kasey_junk 10mo ago
If you are talking about as defined by NBER there is no “official numbers”. Recession by that definition is a) not a fixed set of numbers, the board determines it each time based on lots of different things and they aren’t necessarily the same metrics every time and b) explicitly a backwards looking descriptive designation. Most of the time you will be _through_ a recession before it’s declared.
JojoFatsani 10mo ago
They’re running out of cards to stack up in the form of a house
Ellayyes123 10mo ago
[flagged]
hnthrowaway0315 10mo ago
Not sure about the US, but IT industry in Canada definitely is in a recession. When good graduates from Waterloo CS cannot find an entry level job, you know something is wrong.
deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
farseer 10mo ago
GDP is growing so its not a recession by the traditional definition. But the number of well paying jobs is not increasing overall. You can still become a bartender or a contract/gig worker, those are still in demand.

25 points by register 10mo ago

Official numbers say the U.S. isn’t in recession—does real life feel different?

https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/state-economy-recession-risk/ https://www.realtor.com/news/trends/state-economy-recession-... https://x.com/Markzandi/status/1959686593276490220 https://x.com/Markzandi/status/1959686593276490220 https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-is-keeping-the-us-economy-out-of-a-recession-100012367.html https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ai-is-keeping-the-us-economy-... https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/us-consumer-sentiment-falls-to-one-of-lowest-levels-on-record https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-21/us-consum... | https://archive.today/aVfYZ https://archive.today/aVfYZ

WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago

America is in a 4 income economy - the number of typical incomes needed to reliably meet basic bills (rent,transpo,food,utils) in most markets. I've lived thru 8 recessions, none had achieved this level of difficulty. None had so completely barred new entrants to society.

nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
You mean the average number of full time jobs a single person needs to do to survive? or a couple? or a couple with kids?
- WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
  Four incomes is the number of full-time jobs paying typical (most obtainable) wages. Presumably that would be 4 people. In my market: In mid 1990s one person could afford basic bills on typical, full-time wages. By 2007 living costs had doubled, most due to housing increases. For the next 12 years, wages and living costs mostly kept parity until 2020. During 2020, basic bills (mostly housing) rose and a typical wage-earning home required ~3 incomes as rents shot up. By late 2021 we were firmly at 4 incomes while everything shot up, especially housing and insurances.
  - nrhrjrjrjtntbt 10mo ago
    So for a single person you need 4 x ~$80k median income i.e. $320k for housing, health insurance, food etc. and other basics? Or are we talking federal minimum i.e. 4 x 14k = 56k. I guess you are talking min(min wage)
  - raw_anon_1111 10mo ago
    The median wage earner in the US working one job is not homeless. Most homes are do not have three jobs between two adults.
    - WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
      > The median wage earner in the US working one job is not homeless. Median wage goalpost is up the field from the typical wage goalpost. The latter is the most obtainable income range, the sort that folks could once earn and stay housed. source: I once supported my young family on a typical wage Past that, homelessness and wage earning are generally at odds with each other. This is for a for a number of pronounced reasons, obvious and not. One of the less discernible reasons is that being unhoused makes employers uneasy; I once lost a job when my boss learned I was homeless.
paulcole 10mo ago
In your estimation what was the peak for ease of new entrance to society?
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago
  1968. https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-the-declining-value-of-the-u-s-federal-minimum-wage/ https://www.visualcapitalist.com/chart-the-declining-value-o...
  - paulcole 10mo ago
    Was 1968 awesome for everybody?
    - WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
      1968 was most awesome for white males. My mom managed to keep the family afloat on one income but she was working a higher-income job (w/ wages somewhat lower than the men below her). Winters could be tougher; we ate what we grew during the summer and didn't always have money for furnace fuel.
      - digital_sawzall 10mo ago
        1968 was about 10 years after my grandparents migrated from Mexico to work at textile factories in the USA. They managed to buy a new house in a master planned community that was filled by other factory workers like themselves. He could never be mistaken for a white male, still he took english classes at night and started a side business as an umpire for baseball games and my grandmother started selling gold to the other factory workers during lunch time. They raised 3 kids, upgraded their house, bought a triplex, and a couple acre investment property. Could any factory worker do that today?
        bhag2066 10mo ago
        I'd love to hear from someone who denies this situation who is under the age of 35 and hear their arguments.
ksaj 10mo ago
Most people now forget that 50+ years ago, the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets. I read somewhere that when women started working in the war efforts, businesses took advantage and skewed home prices and whatnot to make it so women had no choice but to continue working. This worked out well, because women wanted to work and have similar social treatment as men. The issue then is that things kept skewing to the point where today a childless couple with high paying jobs can barely afford a vehicle and tiny apartment. This may or may not be accurate. But it is an interesting opinion that I've heard a number of times over the years.
- kasey_junk 10mo ago
  “ the husband was the sole bread winner, kept his job for most of his life, and could afford the house, car, 4 children and a few pets.” We don’t _forget_ this. We refute it. It’s not true. It’s a dream that real estate developers _sold_ that wasn’t real. In 1975 the women’s labor participation rate stood right around 50% its around 55% now [0]. In 1975 the US home ownership rate was 65%, its 65% now [1]. There were more families with no cars in the 70s than now. 1 and 2 car families were about the same rate (with more 2 car families now) but the big difference is how many more families have more than 2 cars now than then [2]. More stats for you: - food as a percentage of family budget is lower now than then (and the only reason its close is that we eat out way more now)[3] - houses are bigger now than then[4] - data on employee tenure doesn’t go back that far, but the data we do have to the 80s shows employee tenure hasn’t changed [5] There are lots of interesting economic challenges now, but _generally_ more people now are living better lives than then past economically. Anyone that sells you some story about some glorious past is lying to you for some reason. Home ownership rates are always the tell. The US had very stable home ownership rates in the 45% range until the New Deal efforts that started subsidizing like crazy home ownership. They rose in the post war era until about 1960 when they reached the mid 60s. They have fluctuated in a tight curve in that band since then. The home ownership rate is tightly correlated to mortgage rates, not generational values, and spikes in 2005 (right before the bubble burst) not in the dim past [6]. [0] https://blog.dol.gov/2023/03/15/working-women-data-from-the-past-present-and-future https://blog.dol.gov/2023/03/15/working-women-data-from-the-... [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RHORUSQ156N [2] https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_2015/chapter2/fig2_8 https://www.bts.gov/archive/publications/passenger_travel_20... [3] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistics-charting-the-essentials/food-prices-and-spending https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/ag-and-food-statistic... [4] https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/ahs/working-papers/Housing-by-Year-Built.pdf https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/programs-surveys/a... [5] https://www.ebri.org/content/trends-in-employee-tenure-1983-2022 https://www.ebri.org/content/trends-in-employee-tenure-1983-... [6] https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/research/files/harvard_jchs_homeownership_rate_layton_2021.pdf https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/files/research/fi...
flag_fagger 10mo ago
I’m really curious about the 08 recession. I definitely remember some of the fallout, but I was young and insulated from much of what it meant. My parents were also lucky enough to be employed with a mortgage. The one thing killing me in the economy is housing. Rent is up like crazy, but even more so rental criteria is ridiculous and competition is insane. And this is in a dilapidated rust belt city with maybe one industry propping up the entire economy. It’s a bit cheaper than when I was in Florida a few years back, but not by a ton. If I could figure out housing, all other problems would solve themselves, but it’s the one problem I can’t solve. My credit score took a battering during a long period of unemployment, and now I’m about as much of a pariah as a three time felon with two evictions, and I don’t even have an eviction. But how was in after the 2008 crisis. How hard was it to find rent them. If you had a job, and income were the rents still ridiculous? Or was it easy enough to find a place if you had money?
- WarOnPrivacy 10mo ago
  > Rent is up like crazy, but even more so rental criteria is ridiculous and competition is insane. Yes. People with solid jobs and money in the bank - people who've lived responsibly by saving before buying, almost no one will rent to them because of a zero credit score. And we know a bit about competition too. We got our current rental in 2021. It was a FB ad, with a crayon drawing of the layout. It was up for less than 2hrs and had 50 applicants. We got it by offering 6 mos in advance + heavy security deposit.
  - what 10mo ago
    People with solid jobs and money in the bank don’t generally have zero credit scores.
    - bruce511 10mo ago
      It'll vary by location, but typically credit scores are a measure of -credit- management, not -money- management. So people who are good at managing money, who tend to avoid credit, don't get a chance to demonstrate good -credit- management and hence end up with a low score. This is one reason why getting a credit card, using it, and then paying it off in full every month is a valuable thing to do. So for all the good money managers out there, be even smarter - build a good credit management history as a side effect of your good money management. That'll pay off in the long run.

fragmede 10mo ago

> GoFundMe CEO says the economy is so bad that more of his customers are crowdfunding just to pay for their groceries October 13th, 2025 https://fortune.com/2025/10/13/gofundme-ceo-economy-inflation-crowdfunding-groceries/ https://fortune.com/2025/10/13/gofundme-ceo-economy-inflatio...

kasey_junk 10mo ago

If you are talking about as defined by NBER there is no “official numbers”. Recession by that definition is a) not a fixed set of numbers, the board determines it each time based on lots of different things and they aren’t necessarily the same metrics every time and b) explicitly a backwards looking descriptive designation. Most of the time you will be _through_ a recession before it’s declared.

JojoFatsani 10mo ago

They’re running out of cards to stack up in the form of a house

Ellayyes123 10mo ago

[flagged]

hnthrowaway0315 10mo ago

Not sure about the US, but IT industry in Canada definitely is in a recession. When good graduates from Waterloo CS cannot find an entry level job, you know something is wrong.

deleted 10mo ago

[deleted]

farseer 10mo ago

GDP is growing so its not a recession by the traditional definition. But the number of well paying jobs is not increasing overall. You can still become a bartender or a contract/gig worker, those are still in demand.