Almost half of the states are either in recession or flirting with a downturn, according to a chief economist at Moody\u2019s Analytics.<\/p>\n
But Alabama is not one of them. <\/p>\n
Axios talked to economist Mark Zandi<\/a> at Moody\u2019s Analytics. He created an index looking at state-level jobs data, as well as other categories such as modeled industrial production, personal income and housing starts.<\/p>\n It\u2019s something the National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee does when it determines if the economy is in a recession.<\/p>\n According to Zandi, Alabama and neighbor Florida are expanding, which Tennessee is \u201ctreading water,\u201d and Georgia and Mississippi\u2019s economies are shrinking. <\/p>\n The states in contraction aren\u2019t specific to one region and make up about a third of the nation\u2019s overall GDP.<\/p>\n Zandi says states seeing shrinkage are being affected by a mix of slowing immigration, increasing tariffs and federal job cuts.<\/p>\n Employment was his most important indicator, but one of many. He also looked at credit card delinquency rates, credit scores, port activity and migration.<\/p>\n Economic news for the state has been largely positive of late. <\/p>\n Alabama\u2019s August unemployment rate was 2.9%, down from July 2025\u2019s rate of 3%, and lower than August 2024\u2019s rate of 3.1%. At the same time, average weekly wages increased in August to $1,117.54, its second highest level ever. That\u2019s a yearly increase of $72.63 per week.<\/p>\n Additionally, both the manufacturing sector and the leisure and hospitality sectors in Alabama saw record high wages in August. <\/p>\n Zandi and Axios points out that the economy is not in recession currently, \u201cbut it\u2019s pretty darn close.\u201d <\/p>\n The problem is that the states most impacted are the ones more reliant on agriculture and manufacturing, he said, as those sectors are more likely to be impacted by tariff increases.<\/p>\n The immigration crackdown is suppressing growth as well, and states most exposed to federal job cuts could be feeling the pinch. <\/p>\n However, states doing well are ones still seeing population growth, like Texas and Florida. <\/p>\n New York and California, both in the \u201ctreading water\u201d category, could decide which way the national economy goes, he said. <\/p>\n If you purchase a product or register for an account through a link on our site, we may receive compensation. By using this site, you consent to our User Agreement<\/a> and agree that your clicks, interactions, and personal information may be collected, recorded, and\/or stored by us and social media and other third-party partners in accordance with our Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Almost half of the states are either in recession or flirting with a downturn, according to a chief…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213514,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[28960,28,101,526,97,308,2229],"class_list":["post-213513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-abortion","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-health","tag-horizontal","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}