The vibes are still off

The S&P 500 keeps climbing, data shows the economy is solid, and Harry Styles just dropped a new album…so why do the vibes feel so off?

Americans are looking around and failing to see all the so-called economic growth that’s supposedly happening. While the headline macro data paints a picture of a healthy economy, under the hood, things don’t look so pretty.

• Delinquency rates just hit their highest level in nearly a decade, while the amount of debt Americans are carrying has also ballooned to new heights.
• Even though inflation has deflated, it’s still left many everyday items far more expensive than they were a few short years ago, and companies are beginning to pass tariff costs on to consumers.
• While the GDP is expected to show the economy expanded 2.7% last year, unemployment barely grew at all, with the labor market locked in no-hire, no-fire stagnation.
• Oh, and don’t forget: AI is going to take everyone’s jobs.

Someone call vibes EMS

It’s been dubbed the “vibecession”, the “K-shaped economy” and most recently, the “boomcession.” At this point, it feels like we’re better at coming up with fun names for a solid economy mixed with low morale than solving the problem.

The downstream effects of the bad vibes are already happening: Gen Z is opting to put money in the stock market instead of buying homes. And many surveys show that Americans believe we’re in an economic downturn, which is not technically the case.

While the US has always had a tale of two economies, the disparity feels more dramatic these days. After all, $1 trillion in wealth was created for the 19 richest households in 2024, and that number is likely to grow when we get the data for last year, thanks to stock gains from the AI boom.

The bottom line: When writer Kyla Scanlon coined the term “vibecession” back in 2022, it put words to the disparity between how Americans were doing and how they felt. But now, the problem isn’t just vibes—the problem is reality.—LB