Tyler Goodspeed said standard recession gauges such as the inverted yield curve, the Sahm Rule and Markov-switching models produce too many false positives and false negatives to reliably predict downturns.
Instead, the ExxonMobil chief economist argues for a historical, contextual approach: over the past century, the US faced roughly a one-in-10 annual chance of an energy-related recession, one in 100 for a pandemic-related slump and five in 100 for credit controls.
Goodspeed used 2008 to illustrate the method, arguing record inflation-adjusted energy prices in June 2008 left US households paying about $2,000 more for energy just as mortgage payments were resetting higher.
His broader case is that recessions become recognizable only in context, making multifactor historical analysis more useful than any single indicator for judging whether current risks are rising or falling.