About
What this site is for
Last Recession is a readable reference site for people who want two things in one place: the month-level answer to when the last U.S. recession ended, and a restrained dashboard of indicators that help put the current cycle in context.
The goal is not to bury the reader in charts or turn the site into a one-number forecast. The goal is to make recession timing, current signals, and historical context easier to scan and easier to verify.
What each page does
Four parts, one purpose
- Overview answers the top-line question and shows the current signal mix.
- Indicators shows the full indicator stack, by category, with thresholds and monitored context.
- Daily Update gives a short plain-English read of the latest processed snapshot.
- Recessions provides the longer historical reference table with summaries for each downturn.
How to use it
Start simple, then dig deeper
Start on the homepage for the month-level answer and the current snapshot. If you want detail, move to Indicators. If you want a fast narrative read, use Daily Update. If you want historical comparison, use Recessions.
Method
Month-level, explicit, and consistent
NBER recession turning points are dated at the month level, not the day level. Last Recession follows that structure directly. Across the site, April 2020 is treated as the recession end month, and the homepage month count uses complete months only.
That same month-level logic carries through the daily update, the indicator framing, and the historical recession reference.
Data
Public inputs, processed for readability
The indicator pages are fed by processed JSON built from public series, primarily through FRED. Thresholded indicators are classified as stable, watch, or danger. Monitored indicators stay visible as context without being forced into the same threshold model.
The point is not to hide the inputs. It is to organize them so the site stays fast, readable, and internally consistent from page to page.
What this site is not
Reference, not prediction theater
Last Recession is not trying to compress the economy into one definitive score, make trading calls, or claim that one indicator settles the business cycle on its own.
It is an informational site built to make recession timing and current macro context easier to read in one sitting.
Why it exists
A calmer way to check the cycle
A lot of recession content online is either too thin to be useful or too cluttered to trust at a glance. Last Recession sits in the middle: a direct month-level answer, a transparent indicator stack, a short daily read, and a historical reference that stays connected to the same framework.