Skip to main content Skip to header navigation

Teens Share Their ‘Recession Indicators’ & Music Plays a Big Role

Thanks to Gen Z’s new favorite meme, everything is a recession indicator these days.

When we asked members of the SheKnows Teen Council for their examples in the video above, we got everything from Labubus to “getting back with your ex,” but the most popular examples were tied to music.

Let’s break down the slang term and explain why artists from Oasis to Justin Bieber are getting dubbed “recession indicators.”

‘Recession Indicators’ Meme, Explained

TikTok’s version of a recession indicator, for those unfamiliar with the inside joke taking off on social media, isn’t an actual economic term but rather a label being applied to pop culture trends that seem reminiscent of a time of financial upheaval.

People are wearing capris again, influencer Alix Earle is bringing back the messy bun, and short manicures are in again. All of this, coupled with Trump’s tariffs and a new tax bill that’s set to increase the national debt by $3.4 trillion over the next decade, is creating a sense of impending doom among young people about the economy.

But, as is typical of Gen Z, the only way to survive the mental toll is by making a silly little joke online. Thus, we have “recession indicators.”

16-year-old Clive says Justin Bieber dropping his comeback album, titled Swag, the 2000s favourite slang term, is a recession indicator. So is the Oasis reunion. Brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher reunited 16 years after they split at the end of the last Great Recession.

Anais, also 16, agreed that music artists of the 2000s coming back into the public consciousness is definitely a recession indicator. Her example? Kesha, who dropped her album, Period, in July and earned a career-first number one.

Even Ed Sheeran agrees. The musician is currently promoting his upcoming album, Play, with the release of new singles that are bringing us back to the aughts. When a TikTok commenter wrote that they had to “admit Ed Sheeran is kinda cool now,” Sheeran responded, “a recession indicator.”

Looks like anything can be a recession indicator if you think about it hard enough! Or maybe we’re all just feeling nostalgic all of a sudden. We’ll leave it to the economists to decide.