How long does it take for the economy to enter a recession after 7-9 months of no declines in the percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed?

In my August 4th post Can the percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed tell us anything about recessions?, I looked at how long it took until a recession began after 6, 7 & 8 straight months of no delclines in the percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed.

At that time we had just found out what the percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed was for July and it turned out that it had either gone up or not changed in each of the first 7 months of this year. So I looked at cases when this had happened before to see how long it took until the next recession as dated by The National Bureau of Economic Research. I also look at both 6 and 8 month cases, assuming those were close enough to 7 to have more observations.

Now we know that we have had 8 straight months of no declines in the percentage of 25-54 year-olds employed, so I will look at a group that includes 7, 8 and 9 months. 7 and 8 have both been done already (from the last post, which I show in the table below). So the new case I have to look at is just 9 months.

There was only 1 case of exactly 9 months, the period that ended in Sept. of 1996.

Months of No Declines	Date Period Ended	Next Recession Began	Lag in Months
7	Jan-59	Apr-60	15
7	Jul-63	Dec-69	77
7	Jun-76	Jan-80	43
7	Mar-79	Jan-80	10
7	Apr-85	Jul-90	63
7	Jan-86	Jul-90	54
8	May-66	Dec-69	43
8	Oct-67	Dec-69	26
8	Jan-89	Jul-90	18
8	Jan-01	Mar-01	2
8	May-17	Feb-20	33
8	Aug-23	Unknown
9	Sep-96	Mar-01	55

There are 13 cases but one does not apply (Aug of 2023) because a recession has not yet started. So that leaves 12 cases. In 10 of them, it was at least a year until the next recession. Next are 10 months and 2 months.

In 8 cases (2/3) it took at least 26 months or more than two years until a recession began. The average lag until a recession hit was about 36 months.

See US Business Cycle Expansions and Contractions from The National Bureau of Economic Research.

Also see Employment-Population Ratio - 25-54 Yrs. from The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.