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Built on monthly FRED and U.S. government data, which publishes on a one to two month lag. This is the most current complete reading the data allows.
What's moving the number
Each signal links to its source data on FRED.
How to read this
Each number is the probability that a U.S. recession begins within that many months. Read the shape, not one number: low near and high far means a storm is gathering on the horizon; high across the board means it is close; calm everywhere means clear skies.
12-month probability over time
Shaded bands mark official U.S. recessions. The number is the probability a new recession begins, so it falls during and right after one.
About the model
The reading is a five-channel model built on free public data, the yield curve, credit spreads, new orders, and the stock market, fit across more than fifty years and eight U.S. recessions. Tested out of sample, it gave a warning above 80 percent in the year before every recession in its validation window.
It is not a crystal ball, and it does not pretend to be. It produces false alarms, the 2022 to 2024 stretch being the loudest, and it cannot see shocks from outside the economy, like the 2020 pandemic. It reads the building business cycle, not the bolt from the blue, and the whole point of acting in cheap, reversible steps is that being early and occasionally wrong costs little, while being late costs everything.
Why it matters
The cheap moves come early, while the sky is still clear, and they vanish once a downturn is undeniable. A forward reading gives executives, boards, finance teams, and owner-operators the one thing late action never has: time to prepare on their own terms instead of the storm's.
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