1 year ago
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Dan Drezner/Substack:
The Dog Not Barking about a U.S. Recession
The mainstream media is not yelling about a recession. Here is why that is surprising.
As the old aphorism goes, if your neighbor loses their job it’s a recession, but if you lose your job, it’ s a depression. The addendum is that if a financial journalist loses their job, it’s the end of the economy as we know it.
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Conservatives would likely suggest that this is an example of the mainstream media’s leftward bias overwhelming their own economic gloominess; they do not want to be bearish on the economy while the Democrats control the White House. But there are two other explanations that are more compelling. The first is that, as noted above, the aggregate economic data paints a more complex picture, and the economic coverage reflects that complexity.
The second is that even in media and tech, the story is not just about layoffs but about churn. In tech, for example, Insider’s Aki Ito noted earlier this month that even as there have been waves of layoffs, those laid off have found new (and sometimes better) jobs:
It’s important to know not just what’s covered but why it’s covered. That’s part of what we do here. Cover the why.
