Employment growth is slowing. Even taking the preliminary benchmark at face value, we’re not in recession as of mid-August (when the survey is taken).

Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll (NFP) employment from CES (bold blue), implied NFP from preliminary benchmark (bold blue), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2024Q2 2nd release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (9/3/2024 release), and author’s calculations.