2023 Economy - Are you seeing signs of a recession yet?

My industry is doing the "wait and see" game. That by itself says something, but I am actually surprised the crap hasn't hit the fan yet. 

They are still building new homes near me and trying to sell them for $500K. Maybe they're succeeding. 

Gas prices up $0.45-50 in less than a week.

Fed just raised interest rates to a 22yr high.

Just dropped $100 at the grocery store and walked out with four bags on one hand. 

Just last week I bumped my labor rate by 15%.

And should have been 20%.

Luckily in an upper end homebuilding industry, that's booming, in a red state.

Every home in over 6yrs has been for people relocating.

Going to ride that wave as long as it lasts.

The bowling alley I work at has been hit hard.    I got laid off from my job.     They said they no longer needed someone to spray disinfectant in the rental shoes....

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I kid, I kid.      My industry has been booming even during COVID (electronics/engineering).    ...BUT, that doesn't mean the country isn't in a recession.       Gas, food, services...everything has skyrocketed.  I've gotten raises, but they do not keep up with the rate of inflation.   ...but I'm very well paid/bonused.       We haven't cut back on spending....but my wife and I have never been big spenders on crap to begin with.   We prefer to spend money traveling and invest for retirement.

Seems like used car sales are slowing.  

Housing market isn't on fire like it was before either.....maybe triple the interest rates of just a couple years ago would have something to do with it.

We are working on contingencies for our market softening. We are oversold and at capacity so a softening condition won’t hurt us the same way as many others. QSR/Fast Food restaurant is growing while traditional Foodservice and fast casual is dropping. That’s always an indication of a slow down. 

Interesting read from the heritage foundation concerning inflation, and therefore our economic buying power.

Main point I read was,

1 out of every 3 dollars we have, has been printed in the last two years.

Pretty much makes it impossible to stay even, let alone prosper from your labor.

https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/inflation-whos-…

$500K, that's a deal. A mere 50 miles down the road and it's hard to find a decent condo for less than $500K.

I work in home construction in the PNW, and it definitely seems slower on the residential housing side of our workload than the past couple of years. There's quite a few projects I've seen recently where we've finished the site development of a subdivision a couple of years ago, but the lots are only 1/3rd to 1/2 built out with new homes currently, which is slow progress. I think the home builders have plenty of lots to build on, but it seems like they're doing a good job of keeping them off of the MLS to not flood the market with homes to keep the prices of new homes high.

The economy feels weird to me right now, it doesn't know which way it wants to go. We have raised out billable rates by about 20% the past 1.5 years though. They had been pretty steady before that from 2015-2020.

Bidenomics at its finest. 

Luckily the private jet market seems to have survived, and commercial flight hours are up, but only cos they fucking cratered through covid

Pubs , cafe's and restaurants are closing at a rate you cant keep up with . 

My suspicion is that you have a clientele already that you'll not see much of a slowdown. However, a good friend of mine that owns a significant portion of the industrial rental real estate in the North San Diego County told me on numerous occasions that he gauges a coming recession by the cabinet industry tenants. He said when they get slow, watch out. That's from many years of observation. Of course our area is very dependent on construction. So you might be a good resource for us to know.

TM

Fuel prices are going up weekly here ,house prices are still on the rise around here but are probably way below the national average for a home of the same size. Grocery prices are astronomical, my utility prices are still exactly double for gas and water. If I had to guess I would say my paycheck is probably close to 2/3 the buying power of a few years ago.

We just got hit with another BS carbon tax so gas is up again. $6.80 a gallon as of Friday for regular. 
The whole carbon tax racket is a load of bullshit. 

A friend of my wife's bought one of those new-ish condos you can see on the NW corner of the 15/78 interchange (on Montiel Rd., right around the corner from ECC.) 
I want to say they were $700K or something like that.  

It seems when we went through the economic stall back 08-09, it wasn't as bad because the cost of living was not affected as it is today.  Fuel, groceries, medical, rent, utilities...ect., remained stable. 

But I am seeing signs of a recession and it goes back to Bidens first day in office when he decided to attack energy.  There's nothing in this country that energy does not effect.  I see it with my customers, and my manufacturers.  My customers' orders are slowing down, or I'll get calls from them asking me to lower my prices, even if by 1%.  Manufacturers I rarely hear from are calling or showing up trying to get fix on what I'll be ordering for the rest of the year. 

Instead of capital equipment purchases and upgrades, I stock piling money.  Focusing on paying off instead of acquiring new debt.  Same goes for employees, running lean instead of hiring.  I see a recession looming in our future, I'm just trying to stay ahead of it.         

It's such a racket, car companies like tesla can sell their carbon credits to other companies who didn't meet the requirements. 

Talked to a big local Phoenix area developer today, who has been in the retail and multi family (apartments) business for decades and built numerous shopping centers and apartment complexes.

He has a parcel next to a popular shopping center he owns, in a very hot area (less than 2 miles from the new 10 billion dollar TSMC semiconductor plant under construction).

He has been planning for 2 years to build 280 apartments on his parcel, working with the City of Phoenix for approvals. He said in the past 6 months, apartment developers have stopped any new units in the planning stages. He said everything being built now was financed with cheap money (when rates were lower last year) but now with rates doubled this year the ROI math just doesn't add up. Banks won't even loan money, too risky with rates so high. He owns his parcel (no debt) but even with that he still can't make the math work to take the risk to move forward. He said everyone he knows is putting the brakes on any new developments that are just in planning stages.

Real estate pretty much drives the Arizona economy, if/when that slows shit is going to get ugly for a lot of people.

I was helping my bro in law with a new start up using coffee waste. They recently discovered there is more money in carbon credits than licensing fees for using the hardware to collect the waste. Such a scam!!

My in-laws have a very successful finish cabinetry business here with mostly high end Malibu/Palisades clients who are still going pretty strong, but their residential side which would fill gaps and cover material costs for the bigger jobs has really started to tank. 

The entertainment industry is really in a pinch because of the WGA/SAG strike. There is a large percentage of people who are going to lose everything if it goes on much longer and that will drag down multiple markets, namely LA, NY, and Atlanta.

I spend a lot of time window shopping motorcycles and other cool toys on marketplace.  It seems like there is a slowdown.  Good used bikes are not selling, people are slashing prices.  I'm getting some good bargins.   We were at the lake/campground last weekend.  It was a beautiful weekend.  I would expect lots of boats on the lake and RVs in the campground.  There were very few people there.   Seems like signs of a recession to me.

I dropped $400 ish for 4 dags a weeks dinners that’s AUD so $270 it’s hectic here. Inflation out of control.

Company I work for is doing great, exceeding budgeted earnings by a couple million. Forecast is for it to continue for remainder of the year so will be nice as we didn’t get a bonus last year after missing targets. Restaurant and other entertainment packed on Friday-Sunday and also busy during the week. New construction looks to still be going strong. Never see beater cars, everyone in new cars and $75k trucks. Gas prices have gone up about $0.30 the last 2 weeks so that sucks. 401k and other investments up approximately 20%, so not seeing the doom and gloom at the moment

I work in a FTSE100 manufacturing company in the UK. We are on an overtime ban, hiring freeze and are about to start trialling a 4 day week in some areas of the business to help reduce running costs.

Been here 11 years and this is the first time sales have dropped enough for the company to take action like this.

Another weird one that's just started to happen... car insurance has gone up so much that some of the guys driving financed cars (above their means to begin with), are now having to sell because they can't afford to run them. Why car insurance premiums need to increased 40% is beyond me.

Natural Gas stock price is also nearly back down to what it was pre 2021, yet our energy bills are still super high.

There are people and companies out there getting silly rich at the moment.

The St. Floyd of Fentanyl Summer of Love has everything to do with rising insurance costs. All the theft in big cities is through the roof. It’s crazy that people can’t understand that each person being able to walk out of target with $900 of shit and not be prosecuted for it wouldn’t have consequences. Instead they lie like always and are saying the rising insurance costs are because of climate change. Bullshit. 

Two-year treasury note yields are HIGHER than ten-year treasury note yields.  The opposite is what the market expects.  This inversion is always a very good indicator of a looming recession.  The current inversion spread is at its highest since 1981.

Perhaps ironically, oil & gas/power generation and we are pretty much booming. 

Not industry related but inflation is effecting how i spend money or rather not spend it. No vacations, very little eating out, no big purchases unless an emergency. Make everything last forever. I cant spout exact percentages off the top of my head but...

The county is now assessing the value of my house at 2.5x what it was pre- covid thus my property taxes have gone up 75-100%. Thus my property insurance has gone up about 75%.

Car insurance went up about 20%

Washington state has the highest per gallon gasoline in the country. Last i saw it was $1.44/gal over the national average. Going for a drive is one of the few pleasures I allow myself. Have to limit any trips to the mountains, fishing etc.

Hell, even a dozen nightcrawlers for $5 is depressing me.

We had a Chipotle open up near us, never been to one and wanted to see what all the hype was about. Over $60 later to feed myself, the wife and her parents some bland tasting food . Not doing that again. Over the last few years i really cut back on fast food to almost never levels, i was shocked when i went to Jack n the box a couple months back and what used to cost $8 now cost over $13. Not worth it.

Average cost of a new car went from mid $30k to now over $50k pre and post covid. A new car is out of the question now. My old fleet of vehicles will continue to be well maintained. Hell, I changed out the coolant in my 13 year old pickup last weekend. A gallon of Dexcool was $21..i swear it used to be around $8.

The economy is nickel and diming me on everything.

Despite all that, with low unemployment, that means lots of folks are still having money taken out of their paychecks to put into their 401k, thus the stock market is showing no signs of recession.

To disclose my personal finances a bit, the only debt I have is on my home, which i owe about $50,000 on a 3.35% loan which will be paid off in 7 years or so when I am 60. No car loan( I paid cash for the last 4 vehicles I bought) and I've NEVER carried a credit card balance in my life. Cards get paid off in full every month( I get 1% cash back on my Fidelity credit card)

Rant over. Thanks for reading my Looooong post.

I'm pretty much recession immune but as I look around I see mixed signals. Still a lot of empty retail commercial properties and store closures which probably has more to do with on line shopping and high rental rates due to increased interest rates. I have a 13 mile commute when I work and rush hour traffic does not appear to be slowing. Lumber prices have experienced a huge decline over the last year and supply chain issues for the commercial stuff I'm buying have almost gone away. Prices for other building materials have been on a slow decline.  Local home prices have leveled off but were redonculous to begin with. Food prices are showing signs of backing off. A year ago, a dozen eggs was around $4.50. Now it's below $3.00 but other prices have remained high like beef. I used to have steak at least once a week. Now it's maybe twice a year. Fast food prices are a huge deterrent and not likely to come down. Largely driven by local minimum wage requirements. I don't understand how McDonalds and Jack can hang on. Who the hell would pay those prices for that shit? There is a Jack just down the street and I never see more than 1 car in the drive through and a mostly empty parking lot. 

When we go to Costco we normally get close to the same things every time, so I dug up an old receipt from two years ago and this past Sunday we got basically the same items give or take a couple things, and what cost just under $300 two years ago cost me $455. 

I don't know how people are swinging all of this and staying afloat.

It has been pretty rough

my work is fine, they are optimistic but cautious - which essentially means no significant increases. This is somewhat of a bummer because we signed 2 huge clients in 2023 so we should be doing better than pre-covid.

Groceries are the largest noticeable difference for me, gas is basically irrelevant in my personal life, as the increase per gallon has been more than offset by working from home.

My wife and I have always been frugal, so we haven't had to make large life-style changes (yet), but we have tried to cut out all restaurant/fast food.

Nothing to see here.

Bidenomics is working. 

🤞