About this project
US Recession Chance is an independent open-source monitor of US recession risk. It watches a fixed panel of leading indicators published by the Federal Reserve system (FRED), scores each against historically meaningful thresholds, and combines them into a composite 12-month outlook that updates daily.
What it is not
It is not a trading system, a forecast sold as certainty, or an official publication of any institution. It is not affiliated with the Federal Reserve, NBER, or any data provider — it consumes their public series and documents its own rules in the open.
How it's maintained
The signal definitions, thresholds, and scoring weights live in public config files in the source repository — every number on this site is reproducible from them. A weekly self-audit is posted to the public log: what the signals said, what changed, and where the model disagreed with itself.
Data
All indicator data comes from FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis). Recession dating follows the NBER business-cycle chronology. Historical analysis uses ALFRED vintages — the data as it was originally published, not the revised history — so backtests reflect what was knowable at the time.