Sahm rule recession indicator, real-time

The official definition

Near zone, the site’s own rule: 0.40 to 0.49. No publisher defines a “near” zone. The site uses a fixed distance from the publisher’s line so a reader can check it; it is not a forecast. Past readings in it often came to nothing. Site’s count: 19 near-zone runs since 1959: 7 during recessions, 3 before a recession, 6 with no recession within 18 months, 3 too recent to judge.

Past triggers

Site’s count: reached 0.50 before or during each of the 9 recessions since 1959 (before 2, during 7; 12 separate runs). 1 run with no recession within 18 months of its start (the site’s window): Nov. 1976 (CRS also records it as a trigger “without a co-occurring or subsequent recession”). Too recent to judge: July to Sept. 2024.

This is a count of past runs, not a claim that the rule has called every recession. CRS: the rule is “an observed historical relationship for a small sample and may not always hold going forward.”

Each row is a run of consecutive months past the publisher’s line, from the site’s back-test of the data as of August 2026. Outcomes use an 18-month window, measured from the first month of each run: no publisher states a window; this is the site’s choice. So a run longer than the window can end shortly before a recession and still count as “no recession followed”; the table says when that happened. “Too recent to judge” means the window closes less than 21 months before the latest month of NBER’s record (Sept. 2026), NBER’s longest announcement lag so far, so a recession could still be dated inside it. The scoring is mechanical: it does not judge whether a signal caused or forecast anything.

Back-test snapshot as of August 2026, retrieved Sept. 26, 2026, computed from SAHMREALTIME, USREC; rerun by hand after a data refresh. Episodes CSV: Sahm rule (real-time) (every run, including the near-zone runs).

Episode notes

What official sources say about each episode, in their words. The site does not state causes in its own voice; where sources differ, each is shown.

1. Dec. 1959 to Jan. 1960; Aug. 1960 to Nov. 1961 (NBER peak April 1960, trough Feb. 1961)

   Hetzel, Federal Reserve History, From the Treasury-Fed Accord to the Mid-1960s: “In 1960, in response to gold outflows, the Fed again pursued a restrictive monetary policy, and the economy entered into recession in early 1960.”

2. Oct. 1969; Feb. 1970 to Oct. 1971 (NBER peak Dec. 1969, trough Nov. 1970)

   Mandelman and Meyer, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta (authors’ views), Lessons from the Past: Can the 1970s Help Inform the Future Path of Monetary Policy? (August 31, 2022): The recession “followed a period of fiscal tightening to make up for large government outlays for the Vietnam War and a sizeable slowing in money growth as the Fed attempted to quell rising inflation.”

3. March 1974; July 1974 to Jan. 1976 (NBER peak Nov. 1973, trough March 1975)

   Corbett, Federal Reserve History, Oil Shock of 1973-74: The 1973 embargo’s cuts “nearly quadrupled the price of oil from $2.90 a barrel before the embargo to $11.65 a barrel in January 1974.”

   Bryan, Federal Reserve History, The Great Inflation: Places the origin of the decade’s inflation in “policies that allowed for an excessive growth in the supply of money,” while acknowledging that “the inflation being caused by the rising price of oil was largely beyond the control of monetary policy.”

4. Nov. 1976 (no recession followed within 18 months (the site’s window))

   Congressional Research Service, The Sahm Rule Trigger: Is the United States in a Recession? (IN12410, August 26, 2024): “The Sahm rule was triggered in November 1976 without a co-occurring or subsequent recession.”

   No official account of a cause has been found.

5. April 1980 to April 1981 (NBER peak Jan. 1980, trough July 1980)

   Sablik, Federal Reserve History, Recession of 1981-82: “The credit-control program initiated in March 1980 by the Carter administration precipitated a sharp recession (Schreft 1990).”

   Bryan, Federal Reserve History, The Great Inflation: “Lending activity fell, unemployment rose, and the economy entered a brief recession between January and July.”

6. Nov. 1981 to June 1983 (NBER peak July 1981, trough Nov. 1982)

   Sablik, Federal Reserve History, Recession of 1981-82: The downturn “was triggered by tight monetary policy in an effort to fight mounting inflation.”

   Bryan, Federal Reserve History, The Great Inflation: “The economy entered recession again in July 1981, and this proved to be more severe and protracted, lasting until November 1982.”

7. Nov. 1990 to Nov. 1992 (NBER peak July 1990, trough March 1991)

   Walsh, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, What Caused the 1990-1991 Recession? (Economic Review 1993, No. 2): “Pessimistic consumers, the debt accumulations of the 1980s, the jump in oil prices after Iraq invaded Kuwait, a credit crunch induced by overzealous banking regulators, and attempts by the Federal Reserve to lower the rate of inflation all have been cited as causes of the recession.”

8. June 2001 to Oct. 2002 (NBER peak March 2001, trough Nov. 2001)

   U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, U.S. labor market in 2001: economy enters a recession (February 2002): “Manufacturing’s downturn started in late summer of 2000 and deepened in 2001, as businesses sharply reduced spending on machinery, computers, and other capital goods.”

   Kliesen, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, The 2001 Recession: How Was It Different and What Developments May Have Caused It? (2003, abstract): “the peak-to-trough decline in real gross domestic product was one of the smallest on record.”

9. April 2008 to May 2010 (NBER peak Dec. 2007, trough June 2009)

   Rich, Federal Reserve History, The Great Recession: Calls the housing market “the epicenter of the crisis and recession.”

   Weinberg, Federal Reserve History, The Great Recession and Its Aftermath: A fall in home prices of “over a fifth on average across the nation” from early 2007 to 2011 “helped to spark the financial crisis of 2007-08.”

10. April 2020 to March 2021 (NBER peak Feb. 2020, trough April 2020)

    NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, Determination of the February 2020 Peak (June 8, 2020): “the pandemic and the public health response have resulted in a downturn with different characteristics and dynamics than prior recessions.”

    NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, Determination of the April 2020 Trough (July 19, 2021): “The recession lasted two months, which makes it the shortest US recession on record.”

    U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Monthly Labor Review, Unemployment rises in 2020, as the country battles the COVID-19 pandemic (June 2021): “the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and efforts to contain it led businesses to suspend operations or close, resulting in a record number of temporary layoffs.”

11. July 2024 to Sept. 2024 (too recent to judge)

    Congressional Research Service, The Sahm Rule Trigger: Is the United States in a Recession? (IN12410, August 26, 2024): On one side: “Almost two-thirds of the increase in unemployment in the past year has come from people who have lost their jobs (mostly via temporary layoffs or jobs ending), whereas around one-third has come from people entering or reentering the labor force.” On the other: “the rise in unemployment has not coincided with a rise in layoffs and discharges ... as would be expected if the economy were entering a recession.”

Caveats

• This is the real-time version: each month’s value uses the unemployment data available that month. The version rebuilt from today’s revised data (FRED series SAHMCURRENT) differs in some past months; it removes the November 1976 trigger and adds a 0.50 touch in 2003. The real-time version is the honest test of what the rule said at the time.
• FRED: “The BLS revises the unemployment rate each year at the beginning of January, when the December unemployment rate for the prior year is published. Revisions to the seasonal factors can affect estimates in recent years. Otherwise the unemployment rate does not revise.”
• Sahm (2019): “the unemployment rate tends to lag the business cycle,” and “the rise in unemployment prior to a recession does not predict the severity of the recession.”
• CRS: “There is no theoretical reason why the criteria used in the Sahm rule is associated with a recession ... it is an observed historical relationship for a small sample and may not always hold going forward.”
• FRED publishes no value for October 2025 (its unemployment rate series has none either), so that month has no point.