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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Altogether, that comes to close to $1,100 per household, paid at the pump and in the higher cost of everything that moves by truck or plane. And the energy tab continues to increase by about $50 a week at today’s fuel prices.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 12/10/2026

Nearly $2,000. By my calculation, that is what the Iran war has cost the average American household since the war began nearly eight months ago. Nationwide, that adds up to $265 billion.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

The economic angst many Americans feel has much to do with how the economic pie is being divided. From WWII to Y2K, workers received close to two-thirds of the pie, while capital received the other one-third.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

The job market is struggling — and not just for foreign-born workers. Native-born workers are having a tough go of it, too. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, according to proponents of stiffer immigration policy. Fewer immigrant workers meant more jobs and higher wages for the native-born.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

The raft of economic data released last week isn’t sending off red flares, but it is sending off yellow ones. No red flares because real GDP is still growing at a 2% pace, with AI and corp tax cuts powering business investment. But yellow flares because consumers struggle to maintain their spending

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

The Fed meets this week, and while it will be the first with Kevin Warsh as chair, it is tough to see any significant changes to monetary policy. The Fed is stuck between surging inflation, which argues for rate hikes, and a soft job market, which argues for cuts, thus no change.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 01/06/2026

$100 billion. That’s our estimate of the cost of the Iran War to American households. That’s nearly $750 per household. This includes the additional U.S. military costs and the higher energy and other prices resulting from the war.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

I wouldn’t take solace in the April employment numbers, despite the solid payroll employment gain. There are a bunch of reasons why, but one particularly worth calling out is the slide in labor force participation. This is putting a lid on unemployment as the unemployed leave the labor force.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

We have a year’s worth of economic data since Liberation Day, when President Trump announced much higher tariffs on most imported goods and countries, and the data are definitive; the tariffs have done significant damage to the economy.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 26/04/2026

The economy is growing, but it is fragile growth. Looking through the vagaries of the quarterly data, real GDP is growing at a 2% pace. Growth, yes, but less than the economy’s potential growth rate, and not sufficient to support any meaningful job growth.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 19/04/2026

The economic damage from the war with Iran is mounting. Just the surge in gasoline prices has cost Americans an estimated additional $21.3 billion since the start of the war over 6 weeks ago.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 12/04/2026

Last week’s economic data show just how fragile the economy is, even before the fallout from the Iran war hits with full force. Critical to whether the economy can avoid a recession is whether the consumer holds tough, and that looks increasingly iffy.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 06/04/2026

Recession risks thus remain uncomfortably high, with close to even odds of a downturn in the coming year. So says our leading recession indicator, which is based on a random forest model that I recently posted about. And so too says our new, tentatively dubbed Vicious Cycle Index (VCI).

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

With tenuous prospects for resolving the conflict with Iran, and financial markets under pressure, recession probabilities are high and rising. We don’t yet anticipate an outright downturn in our baseline (most likely) outlook for the economy, but we’ve been aggressively marking down our forecast.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 16/03/2026

Recession is once again a serious threat. Even before the recent disconcerting events in the Middle East, our machine learning based leading economic indicator model put the probability of a recession starting in the next 12 months at an uncomfortably high 49%.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 12/03/2026

The escalating conflict involving Iran is sending shockwaves through energy markets. Oil prices are swinging amid concerns about disruptions to the Strait of Hormuz. Even temporary disruptions could have significant consequences. Join us for a live webinar: events.moodys.com/the-iran-oil...

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 03/03/2026

Businesses appear to be nearing a Cortes moment with artificial intelligence. That’s my takeaway from fintech company Block’s move to slash its workforce by 40%. While Block didn’t explicitly pin the cuts on AI, it all but did.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

If you felt like last week was an economic whirlwind, you weren’t wrong. Jared Bernstein and Jim Parrott joined #InsideEconomics to sort through the SCOTUS decision, GDP numbers, and what AI, housing, and jobs say about the economy. Econ nerdfest — and worth it. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/n...

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 25/01/2026

The uncomfortable financial stress on low- and middle-income Americans is evident in the December 2025 consumer delinquency rates.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 18/01/2026

The K-shaped economy is becoming steadily more K-shaped. That’s the message in our updated estimate of personal outlays by income group.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 11/01/2026

After cogitating a bit on the December jobs data, I’m increasingly convinced that the job market is struggling, and the broader economy is fragile, in big part due to U.S. tariffs.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 04/01/2026

Despite the considerable drama, the economy’s performance in 2025 is set to come in close to what we had forecast for the year when we did our projections at the end of 2024. That is, the economy did okay in 2025, although it fell well short of its 2024 performance.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 14/07/2025

I sent off a yellow flare on the housing market in a post a couple of weeks ago, but I now think a red flare is more appropriate. Home sales, homebuilding, and even house prices are set to slump unless mortgage rates decline materially from their current near 7% soon. That, however, seems unlikely.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 12/06/2025

Another sign of a softer job market is rising unemployment insurance claims. Continuining claims are up, and signaling a slump in hiring. Initial claims are also up as of late. Anything north of their current near 250k per week would suggest layoffs are rising, and the job market is stalling.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 09/06/2025

The more I cogitate on the May jobs report, released last Friday by the BLS, the more uncomfortable I get about the economy’s prospects. There are a bunch of reasons why (listen to this week’s Inside Economics podcast), but high on the list is the sharp drop-off in labor force growth.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

A high and rising number of American households are under mounting financial stress. That’s the message in the April delinquency rate data we calculate based on all the credit files in the country from the credit bureau Equifax.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 21/04/2025

The Trump administration’s policies are set to severely diminish the economy, not only for the next few months but for years. The administration’s trade war is undermining the global safe-haven status of the U.S., which has provided incalculable benefits, including our economy’s exceptionalism. 🧵

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 09/04/2025

Global businesses are now signaling recession. This is according to Moody’s weekly survey of businesses we’ve conducted for over 20 years. President Trump’s shocking hike in U.S. tariffs and China's tit-for-tat response crushed global business sentiment last week. 🧵

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Leading Indicator #2 -the FHA mortgage delinquency rate. This isn’t common on leading economic indicator lists but it may be a proverbial canary in the coal mine in the current context. FHA borrowers have low to moderate incomes, with a median income of 75k a year, and most are 1st time homebuyers.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 24/03/2025

Leading indicator #1 – Conference Board survey of consumer confidence.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 02/03/2025

The economy appears to be gagging on the uncertainty created by the haphazard economic policymaking happening in DC. Retail sales, manufacturing production, real consumer spending, home sales and most telling, consumer confidence, are all down meaningfully in the past month or two.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 23/02/2025

With the stock market on its back heels the past couple of trading days, it is worth noting how important the well-to-do (those who own the bulk of stocks) have been to driving consumer spending and, by extension, the broader economy.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 17/02/2025

What is surprising is the jump in the survey’s uncertainty index, which measures the number of survey responses that are “don’t know” and “uncertain.” In the most recent survey, the index was the highest it has been in the survey’s long history, save for a couple of months leading up the election.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 03/02/2025

The developing trade war will result in higher inflation and interest rates, as well as diminished economic growth. And it is unclear to what end. My analysis on the potential economic fallout: www.economy.com/getfile?q=BF...

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 14/01/2025

Jim Parrott and I put out a piece on the importance of the GSEs’ implicit government guarantee upon their release from conservatorship, and the challenge that will pose for the Trump administration. Available here: www.economy.com/getfile?q=D6...

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 09/01/2025

The US and Chinese economies are fast de-coupling. That’s the clear story told by this starburst chart, which shows the trade flows between industries across countries in 1996, 2018 and 2023.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 02/01/2025

While not proof, this chart strongly suggests that more foreign immigrants results in more new businesses. This is intuitive, as immigrants are by definition risk-takers. It takes guts to move to another country in search of opportunity.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 27/12/2024

The economy is highly vulnerable to a sell-off in the stock market. Growth is being powered by consumer spending, and more specifically by the spending of the very well-to-do. 🧵

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 02/12/2024

The US economy’s post-pandemic performance stands out as the best among major economies – growth since the pandemic is greater than its pre-pandemic trend. China’s economy was the first to recover from the pandemic shutdowns but has been sluggish since. The European economy has lagged even more.

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Mark Zandi @markzandi.bsky.social · 24/11/2024

We dove into the economics of inflation with Joe Hazell, LSE on the latest #InsideEconomics. We tackle it all from the pre-pandemic stability to the recent inflationary surge, and what the Trump administration’s policies might mean for the future. Listen here: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/m...

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