It’s been a long time since the United States had a “normal” recession. COVID-19 brought on a brief, sharp downturn in early 2020, but it was not a “normal” one of the sort that capitalism produces regularly. The last business cycle recession was the one often called “great” because of its length and depth. It formally lasted from January 2008 to June 2009 and lingered for many more months. Almost nine million jobs disappeared, and it took over six years to regain them.

It was very bad, but it was hardly unique. Since World War II, according to data from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the official arbiter of booms and busts, we’ve had a recession once every five and a third years. The “great” one began eighteen years ago. Are we on the verge of another?

We’re not in one, say the conventional indicators, but the US economy looks to be stalling, as it often does before the onset of formal recession. August’s employment report was a dud, and revisions to earlier data showed a small loss in June, the first minus sign (excepting the disease-ridden year 2020) since 2010. Job gains have averaged 70,000 a month since January, a fifth as much as Joe Biden’s 336,000. Biden’s number was greatly boosted by the sharp recovery from the pandemic crisis, but Donald Trump’s record so far is almost 70 percent below the 2010–19 average.