None of four US recession gauges flashed an alarm on Nov. 6, according to figures from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis and the US Labor Department.
All four measures were marked green. The yield curve was positive, the Sahm rule stood below its recession threshold, and unemployment and initial jobless claims matched their one-year lows.
The 10-year minus 2-year Treasury spread stood at positive 0.35 percentage point. The spread measures the difference between the yields on Treasury securities with those two maturities.
The yield-curve gauge uses zero as its dividing line: a negative spread means the 10-year Treasury yields less than the 2-year. The current reading put the spread above that line.
The curve had spent zero days inverted over the preceding two years. Its current positive spread and the absence of an inversion over that period both accompanied the gauge's green reading.
The Sahm rule stood at 0.00 percentage point, below the supplied recession-signal threshold of a reading above 0.5 percentage point.
The rule compares three-month average unemployment with its lowest three-month average over the previous year. Readings above 0.5 percentage point have historically coincided with the start of a recession.
At zero, the current reading showed no increase in that three-month average from its lowest comparable level over the past year. The gauge therefore did not cross its specified signal threshold.
The unemployment rate stood at 4.1%, matching its one-year low. Its gap from that low was zero percentage points, leaving the measure at the bottom of its past-year range.
No numerical alarm threshold was supplied for the unemployment gauge. Its green designation accompanied a comparison with the one-year low, rather than an explicitly defined recession cutoff.
The four-week average of initial jobless claims stood at 195,000. That measure also matched its one-year low, with a zero percent increase from that level.
No numerical alarm threshold was supplied for the claims gauge either. As with unemployment, the available comparison showed its distance from a one-year low without specifying how large an increase would trigger an alarm.
The four green readings describe where the gauges stood on Nov. 6. They do not establish whether a recession will follow or whether one has been avoided.