Accurate identification of economic recessions in a timely fashion is a major macroeconomic challenge. The so-called Sahm recession indicator (Sahm, 2019), one of the most reliable early detectors of the U.S. recessions, relies on changes in unemployment rates, and is thus subject to misclassification errors in labor force statuses based on survey data. We propose a novel misclassification-errors correction to improve the predictive timeliness and provide a proper threshold value. Using historical data, we show that the adjusted unemployment-based recession indicator offers earlier identification of economic recessions.

中文翻译：

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劳动力状况分类错误和经济衰退的早期识别

及时准确地识别经济衰退是宏观经济的主要挑战。所谓的萨姆衰退指标（Sahm，2019）是美国衰退中最可靠的早期发现者之一，它依赖于失业率的变化，因此根据调查数据可能会导致劳动力状况分类错误。我们提出了一种新颖的误分类错误校正，以提高预测的及时性并提供适当的阈值。使用历史数据，我们可以看到，调整后的基于失业率的衰退指标可以更早地识别出经济衰退。