Timothy Sumer

Moody's Analytics' chief economist Mark Zandi cautions that a recession may be on the horizon. In an interview with CNBC's Andrea Miller, Zandi said a recession did not occur in the first half of this year. Zandi called employment levels the "most important indicator[s]" of a recession. With unemployment at the low rate of 3.5%, he doesn't buy the view that two back-to-back quarters of negative growth alone are sufficient to make for a recession. But Zandi did warn that he expects layoffs to increase in the days ahead. "With this kind of low unemployment, inflation’s going to remain a problem," he said, and to address that the Federal Reserve has signaled it will continue to raise interest rates in an attempt to slow down the job market. Zandi attributed the confusion about whether the U.S. experienced a recession in the first half of this year to the coronavirus pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. "These two massive supp