{"id":281735,"date":"2026-02-09T05:58:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T05:58:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/281735\/"},"modified":"2026-02-09T05:58:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T05:58:19","slug":"the-layoff-announcement-labor-force-ratio-and-recessions-1989-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/281735\/","title":{"rendered":"The Layoff Announcement-Labor Force Ratio and Recessions, 1989-2025"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Using Challenger, Gray, Christmas data at quarterly frequency, normalized by civilian labor force.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cgclayoffratiopix.png\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-59552\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/cgclayoffratiopix.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"993\" height=\"532\"  \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Figure 1: Challenger layoff announcements to civilian labor force ratio (blue). Challenger data seasonally adjusted by author using Census X-13 (in logs). Labor force using smoothed population controls over 2022-24 period. NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Brown dashed lines denote significant breaks due to population controls, at Census dates. Source: Challenger, Gray and Christmas January 2025 release, BLS, and author\u2019s calculations.<\/p>\n<p>Layoff announcements spikes do not reliably precede NBER recession dates (remember these are peak-to-trough dates, so the beginning of gray shading denotes peak), although they do rise either before or during the first quarter of a recession. The exceptions are the 1998 jump, the 2011 and 2015 spikes. The 2015 spike takes place against the backdrop of a rapid dollar appreciation (of about 17%).<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\tThis entry was posted on <a href=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/archives\/2026\/02\/the-layoff-announcement-labor-force-ratio-and-recessions-1989-2025\" title=\"3:09 pm\" rel=\"bookmark nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 7, 2026<\/a> by <a class=\"url fn n\" href=\"https:\/\/econbrowser.com\/archives\/author\/menzie_chinn\" title=\"View all posts by Menzie Chinn\" rel=\"author nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Menzie Chinn<\/a>.\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Using Challenger, Gray, Christmas data at quarterly frequency, normalized by civilian labor force. Figure 1: Challenger layoff announcements&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":281736,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[114,184,85,46],"class_list":{"0":"post-281735","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-israel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=281735"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/281735\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/281736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=281735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=281735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=281735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}