IF THIS IS A RECESSION, IT'S A WEIRD ONE: We've never seen anything like this before.

• Author: Alsever, Jennifer
• Position: ECONOMIC OUTLOOK

If this is a recession, it's a strange one.

But the last two-plus years have shown us that strangeness is becoming normal. The US fell into a recession in April 2020 and, while very deep, it was the shortest on record at just two months. The next year, 2021, the nation's real GDP--the value of all the goods and services we produce--grew 5.5 percent, the fastest pace for any year since 1984.

This year has been equally unusual. During the first half of this year, real GDP declined--a necessary condition for a recession. Yet job losses and rising unemployment are also required for a recession--and that's not happening.

Nonetheless, there's been plenty of hand-wringing about a potential recession and confusion about whether the economy is indeed in recession. There is no question the economy is in a fragile state, and if things do indeed go backward, we won't experience a "normal" recession.

A recession results in a decline in demand. But this recession would be fueled instead by a lack of supply. Most economists expect any coming recession to be brief and shallow, with the only remotely similar recession dating back to the 1970s and 1980s.

"There used to be a belief that all recessions were the same," says Prof. James Feigenbaum, a macroeconomist at Utah State University. Data from 10 recessions, he says, proved that belief was wrong. "With each recession, we're kind of making things up as we go along."

Past recessions tend to be job killers. But that likely won't be the case for this one. While real GDP declined, the economy continues to create an extraordinary number of jobs--a half a million jobs were created in July alone--and unemployment is falling, hitting a low of 3.5 percent.

Employers may be reluctant to layoff workers, because of the perennial labor shortages exacerbated by retiring Baby Boomers and less immigration, says Mark Knold, chief economist for the Utah Department of Workforce Services. "You're going to chew through these empty job postings before you're going to start to chew into real jobs," Knold says. Employers know how hard it's been to get workers, so they may be less inclined to lay off workers.

Utah in particular has a record-low unemployment rate of 2 percent and a fast-growing population to fill those jobs. The state has an "internal population" of young people who are more available to fill jobs, and the entire West has seen more people migrating from other parts of the country. That puts Utah in a good position...