Before it became a meme this summer, a “recession indicator” was a wonky term used by economists. If job creation goes down while unemployment goes up, that’s a recession indicator. If consumer spending goes down, or industrial production, or exports — same thing, say the dismal scientists. An actual recession could be a period of downward economic activity lasting two consecutive financial quarters, and J.P. Morgan says one might only be identifiable after it’s been happening for several months. In some cases, it won’t get the stamp until it’s over.
But now, everyone’s talking about them. The writer/director Emily Sundberg tweeted that her old weed dealer selling his Apple watch on Instagram is a recession indicator. A Reddit post mentions “hot people working minimum wage jobs” as a recession indicator. Another commenter notes that, with summer’s end, they’ve noticed almost nobody posted family vacation photos. Two major superhero movies were released this summer, Superman and Fantastic Four, but neither made a billion dollars. Restaurant reservations plummeted. Wine sales dropped. Beef prices rose. Each of these points can be spun to fit a narrative about the economy.
Looking too closely at consumer behaviour for signs of a recession implies customers will only buy what they can afford. Apart from ignoring the huge definitional bendiness about what it means to “afford” something, this formulation ignores the fact a recession creates financial stress, and stress makes people act irrationally. More specifically, it primes them to act in ways that alleviate the stress.
I work at a Miami Beach grocery store. On my days off I deliver food for Uber Eats. The latter is often busier. It’s reasonable to suspect that, in an economy veering towards a recession, consumers wouldn’t order as much food through Uber Eats. But they do, because the app makes it affordable.
Uber Eats has a tier system for drivers and it works like this: the higher-paying orders are generally reserved for higher-ranking drivers. If you want to get higher-paying orders, as a driver, you need a high acceptance rate. This means accepting the majority of trips that are offered — most of which are low-paying orders in which the customer tips poorly, if at all. Customers tend to withhold tips for two reasons. The first is that Uber Eats charges a misleading “delivery fee” that they think goes to the driver. It does not. Thus, when they’re paying a $5 delivery fee for a $15 burrito, and then get asked if they’d like to leave a tip, customers understandably feel like they’re being robbed. The second most common reason customers do not tip drivers is because they cannot afford it. If it’s common practice for consumers to pay a 20% markup for their lunch to be delivered, it would seem to indicate good tidings for the economy; the fact that it’s equally common that an army of drivers is willing to make that delivery for $2 (be it 1 mile through traffic or 5) would seem to indicate something else.
If a driver delivers enough of these low-paying orders, they’ll get priority access to the fewer high-paying orders. $12 for a four-mile drive. If I can do three of those in an hour, that’s $38-an-hour, which is $16 more than my hourly wage at the grocery store. Except those higher-paying orders never come in succession: even if you’re a higher-tier driver, the app continues sending low-paying orders (e.g., $4 for a 12-mile drive, sometimes worse). If you want to remain a priority driver who gets higher-paying offers, you have to accept some of these low-paying orders as well.
By requiring delivery drivers to deliver both no- or low-profit orders, platforms like Uber Eats ensure that customers who can’t “afford” the service (meaning that they have enough cash for the meal but not the tip) will feel that they can. With a “delivery fee” that doesn’t actually go to the driver, and the fact that there’s never a shortage of drivers willing to run a 40-minute order for $3, it lets the user think that everyone’s getting a deal. In truth, it costs the driver more money to refuse such an order — which would lower the payout of subsequent orders — than to simply take the $3 for this one hour’s work, in hopes of earning $18 the next.
Customers who don’t tip are often the most demanding. They’re the ones who complain; who add delivery instructions like, “Make sure it’s good this time,” whereupon I have to send a gently-worded message informing them that I am nit cooking their meal. I am in a Honda. I cannot say this because I need their money and because what’s worse than refusing the $3 delivery fee, thereby reducing my acceptance rate, is offending a customer and getting a negative review.
There’s an emotional math to it. If you have lots of money to spare, your meal from Uber Eats is a convenience. If you do not have lots of money to spare, your meal from Uber Eats is a luxury. The trap for drivers, however, is that a sloppy joe from Choke My Chicken can only attain such luxury. Disappointment is inevitable, especially if the customer has paid the marked-up “digital” price, a delivery fee, and a service fee. As research by The Hill shows, it’s not uncommon for a $15 salad to cost $31 — and that’s before paying a tip.
This is one reason why Uber Eats allows customers one hour, post-delivery, to “edit” their tip, which usually means “take it back”. If a customer places an order for fast food from a nearby restaurant and promises a $10 tip for their driver, that order gets priority treatment. Delivered in a cordial rush. After that, the customer has an hour to rescind the tip. All of it. For any reason. Or none. The driver is then notified that their $12 fare has been reduced to $2. Some drivers call the Uber Eats helpline to argue for the full amount but most don’t bother. It’s a whole routine. A sales rep will ask you to explain the problem. Then they’ll reiterate the problem to show that they understand it. Next they’ll remind you in funereal tones that these are the terms to which you agreed. The Hyman Roth of it all.
Whereupon the driver must (politely!) ask to speak with a supervisor. They put you on hold. This can last an hour. When the supervisor gets on the phone they’ll be quick: they’ll assure you that they do not personally have any authority to simply give you the extra $10 whereupon your task is to reiterate: “I was promised $12 to perform a task, I performed the task, and I was paid $2.” Prostrate and flay yourself and it won’t likely be more than an hour before they give you the extra $10. Congratulations. The $12 you earned with a 30-minute drive has now taken 90 minutes to retain.
This is why most drivers prefer to let it go and just keep making deliveries. Uber Eats itself surely prefers the same. They get to keep the customer happy, and the driver desperate. The setup is a two-sided benefit. What paleontologists call a “clever girl”.
Here’s my point about recession indicators: if a survey found that 60% of Americans aged 24 to 32 had used Uber Eats more than once in the past 30 days, it might suggest some economic confidence among that demographic. But how would it look if, beyond the simple data, we learned that most of those customers had not tipped their drivers? Or had offered a lavish gratuity, but taken it back once they got their meal?
The cloven-footed detail here is not whether customers are availing themselves of the service, but the manner in which they did so. We’ll never know that. Because how many survey participants will readily confess that they haven’t tipped a labourer in the past 90 days?
If the data is misleading, the optics are worse. There’s a slim and sallow-looking man who used to shop at the grocery store twice a week while undergoing chemotherapy treatments. His clothes were loose and frayed. He bought small batches of groceries. Healthy ingredients, expensive and fresh. He mentioned retiring early because of the treatment. The number-one cause of bankruptcy in America is medical bills. He bought everything with cash and occasionally dug coins from a zippered pocket on his wallet. One day he bought two cases of bottled water and I carried them up to the parking garage and he stood there telling me stories while I angled them into his car, which was difficult, because the car was very flat, about two inches off the ground, with a six-figure price tag and a digital display like a television.
Another customer used to come in once a week, pant-suited and baubled and light-catching, to buy the same small basketful of goods. When checking out, at the register, she’d drop her keyring onto the counter, with its luxurious BMW key fob, wrangle through her purse and pull from her wallet a card loaded with Electronic Benefit Transfers (EBT), what used to be called “food stamps.”. Does that mean she’s gaming the system, wearing all these signifiers of wealth while buying groceries with government assistance? Maybe she presents as a successful person at work but doesn’t actually live that lifestyle. What’s more likely: the card belongs to one of her parents, and she’s doing their weekly grocery haul.
How are we to know? We’re more likely to see the traces of poverty and wealth than to see the things themselves, as with Jesus and racoons. Miami Beach is an island with several man-made islands attached by narrow bridges, or accessible by ferry. When a celebrity moves to Miami Beach it’s usually to one of these islands. The most exclusive is Indian Creek Island. Jared Kushner and Julio Iglesias live there, albeit in separate houses.
Slightly more accessible is Star Island. Jennifer Lopez has a mansion there. Sean Combs has a mansion there but he stays somewhere else. I spent more than a year delivering for Uber Eats on Miami Beach before finally getting an order for Star Island. I was excited to meet a celebrity and apologise to them. After crossing the bridge I was surprised to roll forward and find that many of the lots that were visible from the road were flattened, empty. The expensive stack of meals I was delivering had been ordered by construction workers. They let me glimpse the house they were building: a squarish mansion with a parking garage underneath it and a spiral ramp descending.
What do the empty lots on Star Island suggest about the economy? Probably whatever you like. As a staple of everyone’s routine, the grocery-shopping experience reinforces the narratives that govern their lives. Two years ago customers would blame price hikes on the former Democratic Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. When bird flu spiked the cost of eggs in 2024, some customers made a point of asking at the register, “When’s this Biden Bird Flu gonna be over?” as if the flu was not only a hoax, but the cashiers were in on it.
More recently, the blame has fallen on President Trump, but less is said about it. In 2025 I have not bagged the groceries of a person in MAGA merchandise who did not praise Trump in the course of our transaction. Not when the eggs were $2.99, not when they were $6.49. There’s an older man with a goatee who buys his groceries (and presumably other things) while wearing a camouflage-coloured bulletproof vest. It has many loops and straps along the front in which he keeps a small knife and pepper spray and a dense black rectangle that might be a bullet clip. While idling at the cash register he hooks his fingers into its neckline and leans at ease. He talks about things like weather and decor. When asked if he is law enforcement or military he gives what seems like a pointedly flat smile and says “No”. The not-mentioning of the tactical gear, the polite chitchat while flaunting weapons, is the point of wearing them. Seeing how people straighten up at his presence. Become tense. Perhaps overly solicitous.
Where it lands for me is this: yes, prices are going up, and yes it’s influencing consumer behaviours, but the customer’s feelings of worry, their sense of being put-upon or exploited (by a politician, or a slew of fees, or inexplicable price hikes at the store) and those feelings muddy their rationale. Overwhelmed, people seek small luxuries like a burrito delivered to their door. Feeling their own helplessness at the doubling or tripling price of eggs, that helplessness is made bearable by transforming into something more dignified, like anger; still more affirming, the political stripe of it. Hence, at the register, the sting of the cost is salved a bit by saying aloud, like an incantation, “These expensive eggs demonstrate why my politics are correct.”
A recession might be indicated by what customers feel they can’t afford to buy, but those decisions, at a deeper level of identity, are informed by questions of what they can’t afford to lose.