Please don't consider me an expert, but here's sort of the birds eye factors I've been reading or seeing over the last few months / my opinion on what seems to be happening.

Right now there does seem to be some interesting disconnects in some measures of the economy. I'm talking things like business revenues in financial results, compared to the various surveys that are done. One of doom and gloom measures is a survey that asks how people think the economy is doing. But where it get's interesting, is surveys that ask about personal finances appear to be showing fairly strong results. So there seems to be a broad sense that people as individuals are doing pretty good, but perceive the economy as bad for others or in general.

I think another angle and personal bias of mine, is Hacker News is a specific tech community with lots of exposure to only a portion of the economy. So we're seeing layoffs and difficulty in the labor market ourselves, and expect that to be happening across the broad economy, especially compared to 2 years ago. But I think there are a few factors that impact us differently. I think a primary one is going to be interest rates. For startups, which are going to light a pile of money on fire and hope they grow, there are other areas of the economy that are much safer to get those returns with current interest rates. Why fund a speculative startup when I can get 9% on a private loan to a business. Also you look at medium and big tech companies, those bonds (debt) are way more expensive competing for those same interest rates, so the investment into growth and expansion is way down compared to 1 or 2 years ago. And we get to perceive that through the big layoff announcements that seem to keep popping up, as interest rates have risen. So the B2B space, which eventually serves other non-tech companies and consumers, is soft on growth and expansion, which is often rooted back to funding through debt instruments.

But if you look at the broader economy, for the average worker in North America, wages are going up at or faster than the rate of inflation, the unemployment rate is low. We're probably sitting around full employment, which actually can be it's own problem. The inflation took a shock but is trending back towards norms. Consumer spending even with current inflation rates hasn't really stopped, purchases don't seem to be getting deferred all that much. So companies where there was an expectation of a pullback in spending haven't really seen it in their financial results, maintaining their value on the open markets.

Another angle for people to perceive doom and gloom is also affordability factors in some segments of the economy. Where I am housing is a disaster for many reasons, so I'm sure many people see being unable to buy the same quality of living as their parents as part of the doom and gloom. But the overall financial markets aren't reacting to this, because enough people still have those mortgages, and with the rise in interest rates, defaults don't appear to have meaningfully risen. Overall debts are getting paid, even if they're more expensive.

And another angle I want to tread carefully into, is the politics and policy angle. With an election going on, as I understand it one of the most correlated factors to a change in governance is the health of the economy. So there may be some motive to color financial data or results through a lens to try and produce a political outcome. I have no idea what overall impact this might have, but some of those surveys I talked about above when divided by political lines or where people receive their information get very interesting. I'm not trying to have the political discussion or take any side, I'm just saying watch out for motives in your sources of information.

And there are just overall expectations, inflation has been difficult, interest rates have risen, so we just expect things to be bad. Also keep in mind one of the disconnects in the financial markets is where would someone put that wealth instead, what in the current situation would be driving people to exit the market and try and park cash for example?

So this is probably a very long way to say, from what I've seen, when you try and measure peoples perception of the economy, those measures appear to show the economy in poor shape. But when you look at other measures that influence the overall markets, like sales, defaults on debt, consumer spending, those measures don't seem to paint the same picture.