None of four US recession gauges flashed an alarm as of Nov. 3, according to figures attributed to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the US Labor Department.
All four carried a green designation, covering the Treasury yield spread, the Sahm rule, unemployment and initial jobless claims. The figures did not include numerical alarm thresholds for unemployment or claims.
The 10-year minus 2-year Treasury spread stood at positive 0.34 percentage point. That put the spread above zero, the dividing line between a positive spread and an inverted curve.
The 10-year Treasury yield therefore exceeded the two-year yield by 34 basis points (hundredths of a percentage point). The curve had spent zero days inverted over the past two years, the figures showed.
The spread's current reading and its inversion history describe different periods. The positive spread applied to the Nov. 3 snapshot, while the zero-day count covered the preceding two years.
The Sahm rule stood at 0.00, below the supplied recession signal threshold of a reading above 0.5 percentage point. It compares three-month average unemployment with its lowest three-month average over the past year.
Readings above that threshold have historically coincided with the start of a recession. The current reading did not cross it, placing this gauge below the level associated with that historical signal.
The unemployment rate stood at 4.2%, up 0.1 percentage point from its lowest level over the past year. That comparison measures the distance from an annual low, rather than a monthly change.
No separate unemployment rate that would trigger an alarm was supplied. The 0.1-percentage-point gap was a comparison with the past year's low, with no cutoff given for turning the gauge from green.
The four-week average of initial jobless claims stood at 197,000. It was unchanged from its lowest level over the past year, leaving the average at that low in the supplied comparison.
This gauge used an average across four weeks, rather than a single week's claims figure. No numerical alarm threshold accompanied the reading, and no separate weekly claims total was supplied.
The four readings thus shared the same green classification, but the accompanying comparisons differed. The yield spread used zero as its dividing line, and the Sahm rule had an explicit recession signal threshold.
Unemployment and claims were instead shown against their respective one-year lows. Neither comparison came with a supplied alarm threshold, limiting what could be checked beyond the green classifications attached to those two readings.