U.S. Recession Probabilities

This page presents recession probabilities for the United States obtained from a dynamic-factor markov-switching model applied to four monthly coincident variables: non-farm payroll employment, the index of industrial production, real personal income excluding transfer payments, and real manufacturing and trade sales. For additional details, including an analysis of the performance of this model for dating business cycles in real time, see:

Chauvet, M. and J. Piger, “A Comparison of the Real-Time Performance of Business Cycle Dating Methods,” Journal of Business and Economic Statistics, 2008, 26, 42-49.

Recession probabilities are updated on the first day of each month.

Recent U.S. Recession Probabilities

Month	Probability of Recession
November 2008	98.5%
December 2008	98.9%
January 2009	98.8%
February 2009	98.7%
March 2009	98.5%
April 2009	94.3%

A Graph Showing Historical U.S. Recession Probabilities

An Excel spreadsheet containing Historical U.S. Recession Probabilities