None of four US recession gauges flashed an alarm as of Nov. 9, 2026, based on readings from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the US Labor Department.
The Treasury yield spread stayed positive, while the Sahm rule remained below its recession signal threshold. Unemployment and initial jobless claims matched their one-year lows, with neither showing an increase against that comparison.
The 10-year minus 2-year Treasury spread stood at positive 0.32 percentage point, or 32 basis points, in the St. Louis Fed's FRED database. The reading put the longer-term Treasury yield above the shorter-term yield.
The spread's dividing line is zero, with a negative reading marking an inversion. The department and central bank figures put all four gauges outside their alarm conditions at the reference date.
The spread recorded no days of inversion over the preceding two years, according to the central bank's figures. Its positive reading therefore accompanied an absence of inversions across that period, rather than a recent move back above zero.
The Sahm rule stood at 0.00 percentage point in the central bank's data, against a recession signal threshold above 0.5 percentage point. Its reading was half a percentage point below 0.5.
The rule measures how far the three-month average unemployment rate has risen above its lowest three-month average over the previous year. Readings above 0.5 have historically coincided with the start of a recession.
The unemployment rate was 4.1%, matching its lowest level over the previous year, the Labor Department said. The gap between the current rate and that low was zero percentage points.
No numerical alarm threshold was available for the unemployment rate. Its comparison with the one-year low showed no increase, but that comparison is separate from the Sahm rule's calculation using three-month averages.
The four-week average of initial jobless claims was 195,000, also matching its one-year low, in the department's figures. Initial claims count new applications for unemployment benefits, while the four-week average combines those weekly readings.
The claims average was zero percent above its one-year low. No numerical alarm threshold was available for this gauge either, leaving its position relative to that low as the supplied comparison.
All four readings were outside their alarm conditions on Nov. 9. They describe where the gauges stood on that date and do not establish whether a recession will follow or has been avoided.
