What do Lady Gaga, flash mobs, and low-rise jeans have in common?

They're all things I thought were cool 15-plus years ago.

They're also back, not just as trends, but as harbingers of doom, or what young people are calling recession indicators.

There's a million recession indicators, but my number one right now is how many A-list celebrities are doing commercials.

People brought tickets to Coachella a week before Coachella.

Which is crazy. That's a recession indicator.

Opening Instagram, like, damn, everyone got their master's degree this year. Congratulations,'s a recession indicator. Opening Instagram like damn everyone got their

master's degree this year. Congratulations, but also recession indicator. I've just searched

recession indicator on TikTok. I mean, there's dozens of videos. Our colleague Hannah Aaron Lang

writes about financial markets and she became fascinated with the idea that Gen Z is looking for economic insight in unexpected places.

There's a video with the caption, recession indicators you may not have noticed.

My top five recession indicators.

Oh my gosh.

Recession trend predictions.

The biggest recession indicator.

And these are all just from like, these are not, you know, news anchors or news outlets.

Like these are all everyday people sharing their thoughts on this.

Some economists might be offended by the idea that low-rise genes are somehow related to the nation's financial health.

And they'll be ready to shut the argument down with an old truism.

Anytime you bring up a conversation like this, economic data wonks are going to tell you that correlation does not equal causation, right?

But that being said, a correlation can still be interesting to look at.

We are not in a recession by traditional measures, and the economy, by the measures we have

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