Sahm rule recession indicator — Recession signal by country

About this data

Indicator

Sahm rule recession indicator — Recession signal

Unit

Unspecified

Source

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

Licence

OECD Terms and Conditions (attribution required)

Coverage

32 places, 1,260 data points, 1955–2026

Last refreshed

27 October 2026

The Sahm rule is a simple recession indicator based on increases in the unemployment rate. Originally developed for the United States, it is triggered when the three-month average unemployment rate rises by at least 0.5 percentage points above its lowest level in the previous year. To assess its usefulness beyond the United States, the OECD has calculated the Sahm indicator for OECD countries using monthly unemployment rates from the OECD Labour Force Surveys and replaced the fixed U.S. threshold with country-specific thresholds. Under this approach, the indicator is triggered when the three-month average unemployment rate rises above its country-specific threshold relative to its lowest level in the previous year. For more information please refer to Can we predict recessions using only unemployment data? Applying the Sahm rule to OECD countries.