The Conference Board said Thursday that its Leading Economic Index for the United States dipped last month. The index, which tracks a range of metrics capturing activity in the jobs market, manufacturing, financial markets and housing, is designed to detect when recessions are coming. Among the 10 components in the index, all but two were in negative territory over the past six months.
Recessions are officially declared by a panel of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research and that determination typically comes long after the downturn has actually begun. “Recession dynamics are building steam,” Gurleen Chadha, US economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a note on Thursday. “Corporations should pull back on the labor market reins leading to slower employment growth.