Forget Hard or Soft Landing: Meet the Rolling Recession

You’ve heard about a hard landing of the economy. That’s a full-blown recession where millions of jobs are lost. And you’ve heard about a soft landing. That’s where the economy slows to a nice, steady pace without decimating the labor market as inflation comes down.

Now there’s a new economic meme making the rounds. It’s called a rolling recession, and it’s a bit of a hybrid. One industry suffers a contraction, then another, but the economy as a whole never swoons, and the job market largely holds up. “Industries and sectors take turns going down, as opposed to declining more or less all at once,” is how Loyola Marymount University economics professor Sung Won Sohn puts it.