Earlier today, I heard a CNBC commentator discussing today’s decline in stock prices. He said something to the effect, “It’s all about the Fed.” In fact, it’s rare that there is a day when it was so little about the Fed. Yes, higher interest rates played a role in lower stock prices, but these interest rate movements had nothing to do with the Fed.
There was no Fed meeting today, nor were there any important speeches. Instead, interest rates shot up after a strong jobs report. You can think of rates being influenced by several factors. The Fisher effect and the income effects impact the equilibrium rate of interest. In addition, the Fed has some ability to move short-term rates above or below the equilibrium rate of interest. Today’s jobs report probably led to slightly higher expected growth in nominal GDP (both higher inflation and higher real growth.) That’s why interest rates rose—it had nothing to do with the Fed, at least in the way that most people think about Fed policy. (One can argue that the strong growth partly reflects previous Fed stimulus, but of course that’s not what the reporter meant.)
Some people say interest rates rose in expectation of future Fed rate increases. That’s putting the cart before the horse. Expectations of the future fed funds rate rose because market interest rates rose today. The Fed mostly follows the market.
Today’s jobs report also revised several previous reports. The peak unemployment rate in 2024 was revised down from 4.3% to 4.2%, making a “mini-recession” less likely. (I define a mini-recession as an increase in the unemployment rate of at least one percentage point.) The cyclical low in unemployment was 3.4%, so it would have to reach 4.4% to rise by enough for me to consider it a mini–recession. Last summer when the unemployment rate was reported as hitting 4.3%, I thought that outcome was very likely to occur; now I’m much less sure. At the same time, I’m increasingly less confident that the Fed has inflation under control. These two issues are related, as the Fed is trying to walk a fine line between too little NGDP (with a risk of recession) and too much NGDP (leading to high inflation.)
To summarize, the soft landing hypothesis is still quite plausible, but not certain. If inflation falls below 2.5% in 2025 and unemployment stays low, then I would view it as a soft landing—three years with very low unemployment and low inflation. It would be the first soft landing in US history. A trade war would make a soft landing more difficult to achieve. As always, an NGDP growth rate of 4% makes a good outcome more likely. My hunch is that we won’t land at all in 2025–inflation will stay elevated due to high NGDP growth. I hope I’m wrong.
READER COMMENTS
John Hall
Jan 10 2025 at 7:20pm
“Some people say interest rates rose in expectation of future Fed rate increases. That’s putting the cart before the horse. Expectations of the future fed funds rate rose because market interest rates rose today. The Fed mostly follows the market.”
I don’t know how strong of footing you’re on here. Bond yields and Fed funds futures are closely connected through arbitrage and pricing adjusts so quickly that it happens almost simultaneously from an observer’s perspective.
Scott Sumner
Jan 11 2025 at 1:04pm
Yes, but I’m speaking of causation, not correlation. Of course there’s no time lag in efficient markets, but it’s important to understand the direction of causation.
John Hall
Jan 13 2025 at 11:08am
“Yes, but I’m speaking of causation, not correlation.”
But how do you identify the source of the causation if they happen simultaneously?
I think what complicates some of this post is that it is inspired by a report about stock prices reacting to changes in interest rates. That’s a more difficult chain of events to tie together.
Simplifying can help understanding.
For instance, consider a 3 month Treasury bill. I am fairly confident that the arbitrage versus what rates banks and other institutions can receive is a strong determinant of these rates. In other words, the causation here runs from expectations about the economy to expectations about Fed policy to bond yields. Market prices reflect the expectations about the economy and the expected path of Future policy. The Fed just looks like it’s following what the market when the market is right about what the Fed will be doing.
The farther out in the term structure we go, however, the more complicated it gets. A two-year yield is less influenced by the expected path of Fed controlled rates than the 3 month yield, and the ten-year yield is even less so.
And similarly, when you start thinking about how economic data impacts Fed policy and the stock market it gets further complicated.
Jose Pablo
Jan 11 2025 at 2:52pm
Both, FED interest rates changes and market interest rates changes should, in principle, respond to new information on the underlaying economic conditions. If that’s the case they would be correlated. But there would be no “direction of causation” among the two. Both would respond “independently” to the economic changes.
But FED interest rates changes can be seen as more “arbitrary” than market interest rate changes (in the meaning that they can respond to other things that “changes in the underlaying economic conditions”). To the extent that this happens it would be the FED actions the one “causing” part of the market interest rates changes (the “part” that responds to FED actions and not “only” to changes in the underlaying conditions).
Scott Sumner
Jan 11 2025 at 11:41pm
But current market interest rates aren’t moving on arbitrary future Fed policy changes, they reflect expected future interest rates.
Rajat
Jan 10 2025 at 7:25pm
I have done some sleuthing and am a bit confused by your current definition of a ‘mini-recession’ as a rise in the UnN rate of 1-2%. In your original December 2011 MI post, you queried the lack of UnN rises in post-war US economic history of between 0.6% and 2.2%. In that post, you noted that:
“When the unemployment rate does rise by more than 0.6%, it keeps going up and up and up. With the exception of the 1959 steel strike, there are no mini-recessions in the US. The smallest recession occurred in 1980, when the unemployment rate rose 2.2% above the Carter expansion lows. That’s a huge gap, almost nothing between 0.6% and 2.2%.”
You went on to note that UnN rose 0.6% above the Bush expansion low point by December 2007, when the Great Recession began. That suggests that at least in 2011, you thought that an UnN rise of 0.8% qualified as a mini-recession (if it wasn’t strike-driven). Further, in a 5th November 2019 MI post, you commented that Sahm’s measure of a 0.4% rise in the 3-month moving average of measured unemployment was superior to yours because of the noisiness of the monthly unemployment rate. You even said, “The [Sahm] rule works in the US precisely because we never have any mini-recessions…”
However, in a 6th November 2019 MI post, you seem to have redefined a mini-recession to a 1-2% rise in UnN. You repeated this 1-2% definition in an April 2022 MI post. What happened on the night of 5th-6th November 2019?!?!
In the present case, the US economy by mid-2024 had both experienced an 0.8% rise in monthly UnN and triggered the Sahm rule. Subject to UnN not rising again in a hurry and further revisions, I think you should accept 2024 as a mini-recession.
Scott Sumner
Jan 11 2025 at 1:15pm
Sometimes I try to refine my point after further consideration.
I was trying to identify a range that would allow me to say that the US had never had a minirecession. It would be annoying to always have to say “We’ve never had a minirecession except in 1959.”
I suppose I picked 1% to 2% as simple round numbers for a definition, rather than 0.9% to 2.1%.
You said we’ve had no special factors such as a steel strike, but the immigration surge that pushed up unemployment in 2023 was a special factor. If you look at the very rapid growth in total employment during 2023, it didn’t look at all like a mini-recession.
Having said all of that, I have no objection to people labelling it a mini-recession. Even in that case, however, I’d continue to observe that we’ve never seen unemployment rise by between 1% and 2%, which is exceedingly odd.
BTW, I think it probably would have been better if tighter money had led to a clear minirecession in 2023, say with unemployment rising by 1.0% or 1.1%, as it probably would have meant more progress against inflation, and less risk of an actual recession in 2025.
David Henderson
Jan 10 2025 at 8:02pm
You write:
I don’t understand. That would make the Great Depression a mini-recession.
Did you mean to write, “I define a mini-recession as an increase in the unemployment rate of at most one percentage point?”
Jonathan S
Jan 10 2025 at 8:09pm
My guess is Scott meant “an increase in the unemployment rate of at least one percentage point with no NBER recession” but I’m sure he will clarify.
Scott Sumner
Jan 11 2025 at 1:16pm
Sorry, I meant an increase of between 1% and 2% (but no more), which is the range I discussed in previous posts. My bad.
By that definition, the US has never had a mini-recession.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jan 10 2025 at 9:16pm
What is the NGDP that you think is consistent with <2.5% inflation (CPI or PCE?) and low unemployment?
Scott Sumner
Jan 11 2025 at 11:42pm
Something close to 4%, or slightly higher.
Thomas L Hutcheson
Jan 12 2025 at 3:51pm
Does that not imply PCE inflation <2%? If 2% is the minimum needed to facilitate relative price adjustment to average ongoing shocks, why would <2% be desirable when actual inflation was >2%. It’s one of the things that has always puzzled me about NGDP targeting, that it could produce under-target inflation sometimes.
Craig
Jan 10 2025 at 10:13pm
“To summarize, the soft landing hypothesis is still quite plausible, but not certain. ”
Indeed, formerly in Team Hard Landing, I am now in Team Soft Landing but I don’t discount the possibilities of a “No Landing”
Jose Pablo
Jan 11 2025 at 2:40pm
Yes, higher interest rates played a role in lower stock prices
Do they? I have doubts about this (frequent) way of reasoning.
That would be true if interest rates and future cash-flows were independent. But they are not. They are related.
If higher interest rates “mean” higher future cash-flows (for instance because of higher inflation rates or because of higher real growth) the impact on stock prices would be far from clear.
Probably, the right answer to how changes in interest rates affects stock prices is “it’s complicated”
Jose Pablo
Jan 11 2025 at 2:58pm
For instance, to the extent that the “strong job market” is a suprise, it should lead to an increas in both, interest rates, and expectations of future cash-flows as a result of a stronger economy.
The combined impact on stock prices should be far from clear. Which seems weird is to think that stonger future cash-flows expectations were already in the prices but the hihger interest rates were not.
Scott Sumner
Jan 11 2025 at 11:43pm
I mostly agree, but higher inflation does seem to hurt stock prices, despite what you say. Inflation is also a tax on capital.
John Hall
Jan 13 2025 at 11:09am
And seriously what is up with the formatting of the comments? None of my line breaks show up properly.