September 11, 2023
September 11, 2023
Photo by Pedro Lastra on Unsplash
About 19% of the 390 largest U.S. metro areas — where 24% of U.S. workers are located — have experienced an increase in the local unemployment rate by at least 0.5 percentage points in the past year, according to a Sept. 5 report from Glassdoor.
Based on a commonly referenced guide, called the Sahm Rule, forecasters may be able to predict a potential recession when the national unemployment rate increases by 0.5 percentage points or more from its 12-month low. Some metro areas, including major tech industry hubs such as San Francisco and San Jose in California, and Austin, Texas, have passed this threshold in recent months.
“While a rapid increase in the share of metro areas meeting the criteria of a Sahm-Rule Recession is unusual, it is not unprecedented,” the Glassdoor’s economic research team wrote. “It also increased to a similar peak before retreating during the 1994-95 ‘soft landing’ when the Federal Reserve managed to increase interest rates without sparking a broader recession.”
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