Putting aside the fact that the consensus of economists has never predicted a recession in history, quoting the consensus of economists does not qualify as looking at US economic data. Have you looked at the ISM's, regional PMI's, credit spreads YoY GDP growth, YoY Non-farm payroll growth along with the stock market? Taken together all these indicators represent a syndrome of conditions that have always and only been present either immediately prior to or during recessions. This is not an opinion, it is a fact of the data. Of course this time could be different, but I think most would agree it is not advisable not to build an investment strategy around that outcome.
The biggest problem with this report is that the author doesn't know what he's talking about. Firstly, employment data is not predictive of recessions, it is a lagging indicator, if you wait for employment to give you a recession signal, you are already in recession and thus too late.
At the official start of the recession in December 2007, the 3 month moving average of payroll growth was 101k per month. We are now at 35k per month, even if you add back the Verizon workers you are at 50k per month, well below the levels that kicked off the last recession. That doesn't mean that we are already in recession but that the authors of the above report are ignorant of the historical data.
In December 2007, payroll growth was 84k, employing the logic of the authors above, they would have concluded that the jobs data was not pointing to recession when in fact the economy was already in recession.
