USA Is One Step Away from Recession, Warns Top Economist
The U.S. economy may be closer to recession than headline numbers suggest, according to Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi.
While the official call has not been made, he says the combination of slowing job creation, widespread industry layoffs, and weaker labor force participation is pushing the country toward a tipping point.
The National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) — the body that formally declares recessions — focuses heavily on payroll employment trends. Zandi notes that job growth has nearly stalled since May, and revisions to earlier figures have consistently lowered the totals. If future adjustments reveal consecutive monthly declines, it could confirm that a downturn is already underway.
Adding to the caution, July’s payroll survey showed more than half of roughly 400 tracked industries were cutting jobs. Healthcare was the lone sector delivering significant hiring, a pattern that historically aligns with periods of contraction. Zandi warns that such broad-based job losses often appear before the unemployment rate reflects deeper weakness.
Although unemployment remains low, he argues it’s a lagging indicator — especially in a year when the labor force has barely grown and the number of foreign-born workers has declined. This stagnation makes the rate less reliable as a measure of economic resilience.
For now, Zandi stops short of declaring a recession, pointing out that the threshold of sustained job losses over several months has yet to be crossed. Still, he says the chances of a turnaround are fading unless policy pressures on growth are eased soon.
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Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coindoo and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.
