An economy projecting mixed signals on maybe a recession at some point soon or maybe not.

I'm David Brancaccio after the big dip on Monday, the partial recovery on Tuesday and the decline of 8 tenths of a percent

yesterday I see in early trading the S&P 500 index is up 7 tenths of a percent the

Dow is up three points this morning 8 tenths of a percent the NASDAQ composite index up 80 points or half a percent. Some of this is news the

number of people filing to get unemployment benefits fell in the last week by 17,000 people.

A signal at least that talk of recession may be premature.

Diane Swank is chief economist at KPMG has been looking at government data also on job openings and notes it is

taking longer for people to find work.

This is something Jay Powell emphasized at the press conference following the July meeting,

which they did discuss he admitted

whether or not they should cut in July I think they're feeling a bit remorse about

that right now but the reality is the labor market is weakening the good news is

we're still generating jobs, the demand for

workers is still high, the job openings are still above February 2020 levels, but

the pace of hiring within that data is the lowest level since April 2020.

She says layoffs picking up and the length and time spent trying to find something else do add up.

Both of those trends suggest that the ice is thinning and the last thing the Fed wants to do

is plunge through it into the icy waters below.

They'd rather get back up a bit and get on firmer footing and that sets the stage for more aggressive

rate cut in September catching up to July with a half percent and then they'll calibrate November

and December depending on just how firm a footing

they think we're still on in the labor market.

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