Personal income, consumer spending, and manufacturing and trade industries sales all increased in September.
Updating this chart for the latest release. This chart shows all the economic indicators that the NBER uses to determine a recession. As you can see it is hard to argue we are in a recession at present. 5 of the 6 indicators are still above their level in January and actually are at their highest levels of the year. All 6 indicators are increasing since their last monthly release. This is not what a recession looks like.
And yesterday we got the first release of Q3 GDP. The economy grew 2.6% in the third quarter. Another sign we aren't in a recession.
I extended the chart showing the six indicators that NBER uses to determine a recession back to before the pandemic to show how these indicators behaved before 2022 relative to now. January 2022 was set as the 100 level anchor point for the indicators.
As you can see it certainly doesn't look like we were in a recession this past year. We only have one indicator that is below peak. The other five are currently at their peaks.
And yet you'll have people screaming "Orwellian" to anyone that says using the two negative GDP quarters recession rule is dumb and unscientific.