New research by a pair of prominent economists suggests that the U.S. economy has been in a recession for the last two years after inflation adjustments are taken into account.
According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, cumulative inflation since 2019 has totaled nearly 25 percent. But inflation figures have been understated by nearly half, resulting in cumulative growth to be “overstated by roughly 15%,” say economists EJ Antoni and Peter St. Onge. “Moreover, these adjustments indicate that the American economy has actually been in recession since 2022,” they wrote in a new study published in Brownstone Journal. Undercounting inflation has implications for economic growth because rapid price changes have bolstered the nominal values of a wide array of economic metrics “without resulting in any real change.”