Liquor sometimes is sort of seen as a recession-proof thing.
So are our playlists indicating larger economic trends?
There is a super wide range of so-called recession indicators online right now.
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Hi, my name is John Ribeiro.
I live in Boston, Massachusetts.
I work at a liquor store and one of the things that my colleagues and I talk about is how we notice more people are using cash.
And we always notice that when there's sort of uncertainty in the economy,
it seems like maybe more people are managing to use their money by having it physically so they can sort of keep track of how much they're spending instead of potentially overspending and treating their debit card like a gift card.
I wanted to know what are the real recession indicators outside of like the things that you see on TikTok?
That's a great question, John.
And to find out, I reached out to journalist Hannah Aaron Lang.
I am a reporter on the market steam at the Wall Street Journal.
I've covered the economy and business for most of my journalism career.
And basically what I do now is watch the stock market every day and write about what it means for real people.
So when you log on to your social media of choice, you know,
you see all these people calling things recession indicators,
you know, low rise genes cutting down on manicures.