FRED has added both the current and real-time Sahm Rule recession indicators, created by Claudia Sahm as part of a policy proposal for the book “Recession Ready: Fiscal Policies to Stabilize the American Economy.”

The Sahm Rule identifies signals related to the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to its low during the previous 12 months. The current series is calculated using the revised values for the unemployment rate (UNRATE series in FRED), while the real-time series is calculated using only the unemployment rate (and the recent history of unemployment rates) that were available in a given month.