Yield curve: 10-year minus 3-month Treasury spread, monthly average

The official definition

No publisher sets a trigger for this series. The research convention is an inversion: the 10-year yield below the 3-month yield, judged on monthly averages rather than single days.

Near zone, the site’s own rule: 0 to +0.25. 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: 20 near-zone runs since 1982: 1 during a recession, 6 before a recession, 6 with no recession within 18 months, 4 too recent to judge, 3 not scored (Feb. to April 2019, Oct. to Nov. 2019 and Jan. 2020; sources disagree).

Past inversions

Site’s count: inverted before each of the 3 scored recessions since 1982 (4 separate runs). Not scored: May to Sept. 2019 and Feb. 2020 (sources disagree on whether the curve signaled the 2020 recession, which NBER attributes to the pandemic). 1 run with no recession within 18 months of its start (the site’s window): Nov. 2022 to Nov. 2024 (the Cleveland Fed lists it among “three notable false positives”). Too recent to judge: March to April 2025 and June to Aug. 2025.

The Cleveland Fed: “There have been three notable false positives: an inversion in late 1966, a very flat curve in late 1998, and the inversion from late 2022 through late 2024.” The 1966 inversion is before this data begins, and in 1998 the monthly average stayed above 0.

Each row is a run of consecutive months past the research convention’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 T10Y3M, USREC; rerun by hand after a data refresh. Episodes CSV: 10-year minus 3-month spread (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. June 1989 to Aug. 1989; Nov. 1989 to Dec. 1989 (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.”

2. July 2000 to Jan. 2001 (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.”

3. Aug. 2006 to May 2007 (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.”

4. May 2019 to Sept. 2019; Feb. 2020 (NBER peak Feb. 2020, trough April 2020)

   Sources disagree on whether the curve signaled the 2020 recession, which NBER attributes to the pandemic, so the site scores neither the 2019 runs nor the January and February 2020 runs as hits or misses.

   Bauer and Mertens, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, Current Recession Risk According to the Yield Curve (Economic Letter 2022-11, May 9, 2022): “These estimates suggest that a recession might have ensued even without the unpredictable pandemic shock.”

   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.”

5. Nov. 2022 to Nov. 2024 (no recession followed within 18 months (the site’s window))

   Federal Open Market Committee, Statement, March 16, 2022: Policy backdrop, not a cause: “Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher energy prices, and broader price pressures.”

   Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, Yield Curve and Predicted GDP Growth: Lists “the inversion from late 2022 through late 2024” among “three notable false positives.”

   No official account of a cause has been found.

6. March 2025 to April 2025 (too recent to judge)

   No official account of a cause has been found.

7. June 2025 to Aug. 2025 (too recent to judge)

   No official account of a cause has been found.

Caveats

• FRED’s daily series starts in January 1982, so the 1966 inversion the Cleveland Fed names is not on this chart.
• The monthly average here is the mean of FRED’s daily values. FRED’s own monthly series (T10Y3MM) differs by at most 0.01 point; the one month where that would change the reading is May 2019 (-0.01 here, 0.00 in FRED’s series).
• The New York Fed’s model uses the 3-month bill on a bond-equivalent basis, so its spread differs slightly from this one.
• Market yields are not revised the way survey data are; FRED describes no revision process for this series.
• The latest month is shown once it is over; the month in progress appears as “month to date.”