I'm always somewhat puzzled by debates around "are we in a recession?" b/c we have so many REAL TIME metrics around what people are actually doing.

e.g. credit card companies have excellent data on the amount that people are spending on. Is that not enough to determine if people are spending more or less than in the past?

I understand there are seasonal trend etc etc but even "how is spending on travel this year compared to last year around this time?" would probably have some large amount of statistical significance.