Loading… the first visit can take up to a minute while the data service wakes up.
Loading… the first visit can take up to a minute while the data service wakes up.
The economy is shrinking: companies sell less, cut costs, and lay people off. The main personal risk is losing your income for a while, so the goal is to be able to live without it.
Time to act once this fires: 3-6 months
Build a cash cushion of at least six months of expenses. Pay down expensive debt first: credit cards, consumer loans. Hold off on new large loans until the economy turns. Update your CV and keep an eye on your industry's job market.
Build a cushion of six months of expenses
Add up what you actually spend per month — rent, food, transport, subscriptions — and multiply by six: that's your target. Keep this money in an instant-access account, not in stocks or long deposits, and set up an automatic transfer every payday until you get there.
Pay down expensive debt first
Loan payments don't shrink when your income does. Write out every loan you have with its interest rate and clear the most expensive ones first — usually credit cards and consumer loans. Postpone new large loans, like a mortgage or a car loan, until the economy stabilises.
The macro conditions that define this scenario. Because some markers apply only to certain countries, how much each one adds to a score depends on the country — a country's own page shows its exact split. Weighting is relative: ×2 counts twice as much as ×1.
| Indicator | Alarm line | Weighting |
|---|---|---|
| Real GDP growth (annual) | below 0% | ×2 |
| Unemployment (% of labor force) | a rise of more than 1.5 pp above its recent low | ×1 |
| Sahm-rule recession indicator (US, monthly)only for USA | at or above 0.5 pp | ×2 |
Markers tagged “only for” use a data source that exists for those countries alone — every other country's score is computed without them, so they never dilute or affect anyone else.