When the economy takes a turn for the worse, we generally consider the landing “hard” or “soft” — in other words, we expect a quick catastrophe with millions of jobs lost or a gradual slowdown as inflation stalls.
But neither of those scenarios quite captures what’s going on in the U.S. today. Instead, we’re in what some people are calling a “rolling recession,” a hybrid of sorts where industries contract on an alternating basis and the job market remains steady, Bloomberg reported.
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Despite mass tech layoffs dominating headlines since the end of last year, the job market as a whole has held firm with low unemployment and relatively fast-rising wages, per CNBC. What’s more, 517,000 jobs were added in January alone, according to a report from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Although a “rolling recession” might not explain all of the economic ups and downs, it tracks with the pattern of various industry contractions.
Housing was first amid rapidly rising interest rates; manufacturing followed as demands for goods shrank and services grew; and now tech, which saw more than 97,000 job cuts since the end of 2022, is taking the hit, per Bloomberg.
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But this isn’t the first time we’ve been in a “rolling recession.” Veteran financial market analyst Ed Yardeni told the outlet he remembers using the term in the mid-1980s during a collapse in energy prices and turmoil in commercial real estate, and 2016 saw another soft patch as well.