The US Recession Risk Dashboard tracks key economic indicators published by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) to give a clear, data-driven picture of the health of the US economy. Rather than simply reporting raw numbers, the dashboard synthesizes 27 data series across six economic categories into a single, easy-to-read scorecard — making it clear at a glance whether conditions are Healthy, showing signs of Caution, or raising an Alert.
The dashboard is built for anyone who wants to understand the direction of the US economy without wading through government data releases or financial news noise. It updates automatically on weekdays using fresh data from the FRED API and AI-generated analysis from Anthropic's Claude.
The central question this dashboard is designed to answer is: is there a disconnect between the stock market and the average American consumer?
Stock markets can rise — and stay elevated — even when consumers are under serious financial stress. Credit card delinquencies climb, real wages stagnate, consumer sentiment falls, and retail spending slows, yet the S&P 500 continues to reach new highs. This divergence matters because prolonged disconnects often precede economic corrections, and because the headline narrative (markets are up, so the economy is fine) can mask real stress in household finances.
The Disconnect Chart at the top of the dashboard places the S&P 500 and the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index on the same scale, both indexed to 100 from the same starting date. When the two lines diverge, the disconnect is immediately visible — no interpretation required.
The dashboard organizes its 27 indicators into six thematic sections, each covering a distinct dimension of economic health:
Each indicator is evaluated against research-calibrated thresholds and assigned one of three statuses:
Section-level status rolls up from individual indicator statuses using rules calibrated for each section. For example, the Labor Market section requires two or more indicators to be in caution or alert before the section status reflects that, because individual indicators like payroll growth fire false caution signals in roughly a quarter of historically healthy months. Thresholds are anchored to post-2009 data regimes where appropriate, since the structural changes following the Global Financial Crisis make pre-2009 norms an unreliable benchmark for several series.
Scored indicators are marked with a ★ in their chart title. The dashboard deliberately distinguishes between scored indicators — those that feed into section status — and context-only indicators that appear on charts for interpretive value but do not affect scoring.
The national dashboard answers whether the US economy as a whole is showing signs of recession risk. But a state's economy can look very different from the national picture — a regional shock can hit one state's industry hard while the rest of the country stays healthy, or vice versa. The State Recession Map scores every state independently, using only that state's own labor market and economic activity data.
A state is flagged only when both of the following are true: its current unemployment rate is at least 0.5 percentage points above its own trailing 4-quarter low (a Sahm-style signal, applied state-by-state rather than nationally), and its own coincident activity index — a broad measure of regional economic activity published by the Philadelphia Fed — has declined quarter-over-quarter. Both signals have to fire together before a state is marked flagged.
That "and" is deliberate — it isn't "either signal is enough." A single-signal rule would regularly flag states like Texas, North Dakota, or Wyoming during ordinary swings in oil prices: a temporary, regional disruption that never turns into a genuine broad-based downturn there. This combined rule was checked against three independent historical periods across all 50 states and produced a false-positive rate of 5.8-6.8%, which is why it — rather than unemployment rate alone — was chosen for the map.
Each state is shown as a colored tile on the map:
Click or tap a state for its detail panel: its unemployment rate compared side-by-side with the national rate, the Sahm gap and coincident index change behind its status, how many consecutive quarters it's been flagged, and a short AI-generated note on that state's specific situation.
State-level unemployment and coincident-index data from FRED is only published quarterly (unlike several of the national dashboard's monthly or daily series), so the map updates on a quarterly cadence rather than every time the national dashboard refreshes. It still checks for new data on the same weekday schedule as the rest of the site.
Each section, and the hero disconnect chart, includes a written narrative generated by Anthropic's Claude AI. The narrative receives the current data values and section status, and translates them into plain-English context — explaining not just what the numbers say individually, but what they mean together and how conditions compare to historical patterns.
Only anonymized economic data values are sent to the Claude API for narrative generation. No user data or personally identifiable information is ever transmitted. AI narratives are regenerated automatically when new FRED data is available, and are clearly labeled with a ✦ AI Analysis marker throughout the dashboard.
All economic data is sourced from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis (FRED) API. FRED is the most comprehensive and reliable source of US macroeconomic data, covering thousands of series from government agencies including the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Federal Reserve, and more. All data on this dashboard is publicly available and free to access.
The dashboard updates automatically on weekdays when new FRED data is published. Not all indicators update at the same frequency — GDP is quarterly, most labor and consumer data is monthly, and market and financial conditions data is daily or weekly. The dashboard always shows the most recent available observation for each series, so some indicators will reflect more recent readings than others at any given time.
Charts display up to 10 years of history by default. All charts include shaded regions marking NBER-designated recession periods, providing historical context for how current readings compare to past downturns. Chart data can be zoomed and panned interactively.
The US Recession Risk Dashboard is an independent economic monitoring site published at FREDEconDashboard.com and maintained by BitByCode. It is not affiliated with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis or any government agency.
Questions, feedback, or data corrections are welcome at FRED@bitbycode.com, or browse the FAQ for answers to common questions.