Growth recession
A growth recession is a period when the economy still grows, but below its potential pace — jobs are added too slowly to keep unemployment flat and real incomes stagnate. It feels like a recession to households while failing every technical recession test.
Why it matters
Growth recessions explain episodes where signals flash yellow without a recession following — activity decelerates enough to push some indicators toward their thresholds but not enough for the NBER definition. 2015–16 was a classic: an industrial and oil-sector downturn that never became an economy-wide contraction.
The signal interpretation
This is where weighted composite scoring earns its keep — in a growth recession a few signals fire while the rest hold, keeping the score in 'elevated' rather than 'high'. Reading signals in isolation would overcall these episodes; the panel as a whole usually doesn't.