NPR. Have you ever been on an airplane when it's approaching the airport and instead of landing the plane just starts to circle?

And at first you're like, this is fine, but the longer you wait, the more this feeling in the pit of your stomach starts to grow.

Yeah, and then the pilot gets on the intercom and says something like,

nah-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba, you don't even understand it.

And you keep circling and more time passes.

And before you know, every little bump and dip

sends you into this low-key panic.

You start to think to yourself, is something wrong? Are we going to have to

land soon? And when we do, is everything going to be all right?

If you ask us, that's a pretty good analogy for the economy right now. For more than two years the Federal Reserve

has tried to tame inflation by raising interest rates. The idea was that it would

cool down the economy and bring inflation down to its 2% target.

And so for months, it feels like we've been

circling the runway, wondering when inflation

will finally get back to normal,

and when we finally land, is it going to be a soft landing or a hard one?

And last Friday, the economy just hit one of those stomach-churning bumps.

This is the indicator from Planet Money? I'm Adrian Ma.

And I'm Darien Woods. The monthly jobs report on Friday showed the US labour market cooling,

and it kind of sent this shockwave through the stock market.

But is it a sign that we might be in for a hard landing

and a potential recession?

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