Weekly Recession Report — June 7, 2026

Weekly Recession Risk Report — Week of June 7, 2026

This week’s dashboard continues to send a two-speed message: labor market and financial conditions remain broadly stable, while household psychology and goods-economy activity are flashing late-cycle stress. The most important tension is between “soft” recession signals (record-low consumer sentiment, collapsing savings, weak freight, falling temp help) and “hard” coincident conditions that are still holding up (industrial production expansion, low initial claims, tight credit spreads, equity indices near highs). The baseline remains slow-growth / late-cycle expansion, but recession risk is being pulled forward by (1) a weakening hiring pipeline (quits + temp help), (2) consumer cash-flow fragility, and (3) fiscal constraint that limits shock-absorption capacity if growth rolls over.

Primary Indicators (growth + jobs + real economy)

Labor market: stable headline, deteriorating “risk-on” behavior

Unemployment Rate (WATCH): 4.3% — modestly higher vs. the cycle lows, but not recessionary on its own. The May 2026 Employment Situation keeps the labor market in “still okay” territory on the surface. (bls.gov)
Initial Jobless Claims (SAFE): 225K — consistent with a labor market that is not in broad-based layoffs.
Sahm Rule (SAFE): 0.10 — well below trigger; corroborates that a recession is not “here” yet.
JOLTS Quits Rate (WARNING): 1.9% — the quits rate is now meaningfully below the pre-pandemic norm, signaling lower worker confidence and reduced job-switching power. This tends to lead slower wage growth and softer consumption later, even if the unemployment rate stays contained for a while. (bls.gov)

Interpretation: The labor market’s headline remains resilient, but behavioral labor indicators (quits, temp help) are weakening. That’s typical of a late-cycle transition where firms freeze hiring before they cut payrolls.

Employment composition: temp help and manufacturing are your warning lights

Temporary Help Services (DANGER): 2,490K — sharp decline; temp employment is historically a high-signal leading indicator because companies cut contingent labor first.
Manufacturing Employment (WATCH): 12.6M — below trend, consistent with the broader theme of a softening goods economy.

Interpretation: Even if services remain stable, sustained deterioration in temp help often precedes a broader slowdown in total employment. This is one of the clearest recession-leading signals on the board right now.

Output: industrial production still expanding

SAFE Industrial Production Index: 102.5 — your system flags this as expanding, which helps anchor the “no immediate recession” case.
Conference Board LEI (SAFE): 1.7 — positive in your reading, which is notable given how often LEI weakness precedes downturns.

Interpretation: The production side says the economy still has a floor. The key question is whether that floor holds if consumer spending weakens further.

Growth nowcasts: below trend but not contracting

GDP Growth (QoQ SAAR, WATCH): 1.6% — slow growth regime.
Atlanta Fed GDPNow (WATCH): 1.8% — also signals below-trend expansion, not contraction. Note: the Atlanta Fed model’s published estimates can move meaningfully with each data input; early June commentary showed a higher Q2 tracking estimate than your 1.8% reading, underscoring the volatility of nowcasts. (atlantafed.org)

Secondary Indicators (households, housing, confidence, profits)

Consumers: confidence is crisis-level; balance sheet buffer is gone

Consumer Sentiment (UMich, DANGER): 49.8 — extremely depressed. UMich reporting shows the index at 49.8 for April 2026 (final) and highlights how weak sentiment has become in recent months. (sca.isr.umich.edu)
Personal Savings Rate (DANGER): 2.6% — “tapped out” consumers. This is one of the most recession-relevant constraints: when savings buffers are thin, small shocks (gasoline, rents, insurance, credit costs) can translate quickly into spending cuts.
Real Personal Income ex-Transfers (WATCH): $16.5T — monitor for deceleration; income is the bridge between “bad vibes” and “real spending pullback.”
Credit Card Delinquency Rate (WATCH): 2.9% — rising stress at the margin, consistent with low savings.

Interpretation: The consumer is the biggest macro fragility in your dashboard. The combination of very low sentiment + very low savings + rising delinquencies is consistent with a late-cycle environment where consumption can slow abruptly—especially if labor market conditions soften from “stable” to “slightly worse.”

Housing: slowing but not collapsing

Housing Starts (WATCH): 1,465K and Building Permits (WATCH): 1,423K — moderate but slowing. Housing typically turns before the broader economy, so this remains a “watch closely” category.

Business fundamentals: profits still supportive

Corporate Profits After Tax (SAFE): $3.9T — healthy corporate cash generation reduces immediate default risk and supports capex/retention—unless demand weakens sharply.

Liquidity & Credit (banking system, money, lending)

Financial conditions: near-normal, not restrictive

Chicago Fed NFCI (WATCH): -0.49 — near normal-to-easy conditions (negative values imply looser-than-average conditions). (tradingeconomics.com)
High Yield OAS (SAFE): 274 bps — tight spreads; the credit market is not pricing imminent recession.

Interpretation: Credit is not confirming recession risk right now. That matters because many recessions become unavoidable when spreads gap out and refinancing shuts down. We are not there.

Bank balance-sheet vulnerability remains a latent tail risk

Bank Unrealized Losses (WARNING): ~$5.155T HTM — large mark-to-market sensitivity is a structural vulnerability: if deposit costs rise or liquidity stress returns, banks can be forced to realize losses or tighten credit faster.

Lending standards: modest tightening

SLOOS Lending Standards (WATCH): 8.1% net tightening — not a credit crunch, but directionally consistent with slower growth.

Money & plumbing: ON RRP is effectively gone

ON RRP Facility (WARNING): $761M — essentially depleted. That typically means the system has less “excess” cash parked at the Fed, and marginal liquidity dynamics depend more on T-bill supply, reserves, and bank funding conditions.

Market Indicators (risk appetite, valuations, cross-asset signals)

Equities: “risk-on” pricing persists

S&P 500 (SAFE): 7,584, NASDAQ Composite (SAFE): 26,831, Dow (SAFE): 51,562 — all near highs in your readings.
VIX (SAFE): 15.4 — complacent-to-normal volatility; markets are not pricing near-term stress.

Interpretation: Equity levels and volatility indicate ongoing risk appetite, which usually coincides with continued expansion. The caveat: equities can stay strong deep into late-cycle phases until something breaks (earnings, credit, liquidity, or inflation policy).

Valuation risk: concentrated in tech / duration assets

NASDAQ / GDP (DANGER): 0.8432 and NASDAQ P/E (WATCH): 30.0x — indicates elevated duration/tech valuation risk.
S&P 500 P/E (WATCH): 22.0x and S&P 500 / GDP (WARNING): 0.2384 — expensive vs. long-run norms.

Interpretation: Valuation does not cause recessions, but it raises the probability that any growth scare becomes a financial tightening event via drawdowns, reduced wealth effects, and tighter funding for speculative segments.

Cross-asset “fear” signals: metals ratios are screaming caution

Copper-to-Gold (DANGER): 0.00077 — extreme industrial fear in your framework (copper is cyclical; gold is defensive).
Gold-to-Silver (WARNING): 85.0 — elevated; consistent with defensive positioning.

Interpretation: These are among the strongest “something is off” signals in the dashboard because they often lead the real economy when industrial demand expectations roll over.

Dollar and curves: no immediate recession alarm

DXY (SAFE): 118.9 — stable dollar (in your framework).
Yield Curve 2s30s (SAFE): 0.92 and 2s10s (WATCH): 0.38 — steepening after inversion can be late-cycle; watch whether steepening is driven by falling front-end yields (growth fear) or rising long-end yields (inflation/fiscal premium).
NY Fed Recession Probability (SAFE): 4.9% — low implied probability from the 3m–10y spread model. (recessionpulse.com)
JPM Recession Probability (WATCH): 35% — materially higher than the yield-curve model; highlights that “model-based” recession risk depends heavily on which channel you emphasize (rates curve vs. labor/consumer leading indicators).

Conclusion & Outlook (next 4–12 weeks)

Current call: Late-cycle expansion with elevated downside risk.
RecessionPulse composite message: hard data stable; leading labor + goods + household buffer deteriorating; markets still relaxed.

What would move us toward a higher recession risk call?

Claims trend reversal: a sustained move higher in initial claims and continued claims (not just a noisy week).
Broader labor cooling: temp help weakness spreading into total payroll growth, plus quits staying depressed.
Consumer retrenchment: low savings translating into weaker real retail sales / services demand and higher delinquencies.
Credit confirmation: HY spreads widening meaningfully and/or SLOOS tightening accelerating.

What would reduce recession risk?

Sentiment stabilization (even at low levels) paired with steady real income growth.
Freight bottoming and improvement in goods-demand indicators.
No spillover from temp help into core employment and unemployment rate stability.

Bottom line: This is a week where the dashboard argues for discipline: don’t call a recession just because sentiment is awful and freight is weak, but also don’t ignore the signal from temp help + quits + savings. If those continue to deteriorate while markets remain complacent, the probability of a sharper growth disappointment later in 2026 rises materially.