This Is Why We Didn’t Have a Recession in 2023

This time last year, almost everyone was calling for a recession to engulf the US economy in 2023. One of those forecasters was was Anna Wong, Chief US Economist for Bloomberg Economics. In October of last year, her model of the US economy showed a 100% chance of a recession happening in 2023. But, here we are more than 12 months later, and US economic data keeps coming in relatively strong. Unemployment remains near multi-decade lows and inflation is pretty close to the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Yet there are still some confusing signals about the economy’s overall direction, including surveys showing that many people are extremely pessimistic in their economic outlook. In this episode we speak with Anna about how she’s thinking about the conflicting signals in the US economy, why recession didn’t materialize in 2023 in the way many people thought it would, and what she’s looking out for next year. This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.