This is Planet Money from NPR.

We are in a really weird economic moment.

On the one hand, unemployment is basically at a half century low.

The labor market is incredibly strong.

And on the other hand, we have the highest inflation in 40 years.

The Federal Reserve just decided to hike interest rates by the most in almost three decades,

which is helping to cool the overheating housing market, all of which has helped financial

markets to start vomiting.

And then we learned that gross domestic product declined at an annualized rate of 1.5% in the

first quarter of this year.

So you might suddenly be hearing from us and others that there's this growing risk of

recession.

Some are arguing that we're already in a recession.

You can get pretty contentious and kind of political.

But officially, there are only eight people in the country whose opinions on this matter,

who formally make the determination.

Are we in a recession?

Hello and welcome to Planet Money.

I'm Mary Childs.

And I'm Greg Grzalski.

Today in the show, who are these eight people who diagnose what's going on in the economy?

How do they do it?

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