How widespread is the economy's movement? Every member indicator casts one monthly vote — improving, abstaining, or deteriorating, judged against its own history. This page reports the count.
basis: as known live census · updated Oct 17
Each member counted at its latest monthly vote; the month record settles on the chart.
Growth is the default state: net breadth at or above +25 in 64.8% of months since 1964, at or below −25 in only 4.1% — improvement is diffuse and constant; broad deterioration is rare and concentrated.
Widest recorded: +83.3% (Jan 1966). Narrowest: −73.3% (Mar 1991).
Data through: September 2026 · updated Oct 17
Net breadth = improving minus deteriorating, as a share of the full electorate. The last 40 years shown; expand the chart to reach the full record back to 1964.
Of the 31 months at or below −25, 74.2% were NBER recession months — each month's count read from what had been published by that month's end.
Not every broad deterioration was a recession month: Apr 1975, Apr 1991, Dec 2001, Jan 2002, Jul 2009, May 2020, Jun 2020, Jul 2020 sat at or below −25 outside any NBER recession. Counting describes; it does not predict.
Regime record window: Aug 1981–Sep 2026 · 542 months
| regime | months | median net breadth | range |
|---|---|---|---|
| Healthy Expansion | 214 | +41.4% | +8.3% to +80.0% |
| Soft Patch | 88 | +20.4% | −19.0% to +50.0% |
| Contraction | 46 | −20.4% | −73.3% to +29.2% |
| Overheating | 41 | +25.0% | −4.2% to +83.3% |
| Early Recovery | 33 | +19.0% | −28.6% to +73.3% |
| Cooling | 32 | +32.6% | +9.1% to +60.0% |
| Disinflation | 22 | +20.8% | 0.0% to +37.5% |
| Transitional | 20 | +19.0% | −14.3% to +45.8% |
| Below-Target Drift | 17 | +30.4% | +13.0% to +47.8% |
| Unclassified | 15 | +16.7% | −13.3% to +54.2% |
| Snapback | 14 | +23.3% | −41.7% to +54.2% |
Ranges overlap across regimes — a month's label does not fix its participation, and a participation reading does not name a regime. Label and participation are different facts.
Regime record window: Aug 1981–Sep 2026 · 527 months compared
Same side in 502 of 527 months (95.3%) · current run 48 months.
High agreement is partly expected, because both lean expansionary most months. Net breadth is at or above zero in 89.9% of compared months, and the regime label sits on the expansion side in 91.3%. The disagreements are the informative months.
Dec 1981 – Mar 1982 · Oct–Nov 1982 · Oct–Dec 1991 · Mar–Apr 2001 · Jul 2001 · Jan–Feb 2002 · Nov 2002 – Jan 2003 · Feb 2008 · May 2008 · Sep–Nov 2009 · Mar 2020 · Jul 2020 · Jul 2022
Where the count and the label diverged — shown whether flattering or not.
24 voters, one per economic fact · deferred: existing home sales (2030), ISM mfg + services (~2031) · cell of record: 3-month window, p50 band · descriptive only — counts, never probabilities