Many have heard and are concerned about the possibility of the United States economy going into a recession, and some experts are looking at the cardboard box industry to project what may be coming. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a metric that has been tracked for a really long time. At least thirty years. Alan Greenspan was the chair of the Federal Reserve back in the \u201990s. And that was one of his favorite metrics to sort of look at where the economy is heading.\u201d<\/p>\n
Virginia Tech professor of economics J\u2019Adrian Wooten says the cardboard box industry generated close to $100 billion last year, and monitoring production and capacity might be more useful for predicting the future than unemployment and inflation rates.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, this is what we call economic indicators,\u201d Wooten said. \u201cIt\u2019s the idea that we are trying to project or predict what\u2019s going to happen in the future. So when we get the inflation report at the beginning of each month, it tells us what the prices used to be. It\u2019s a signal to what\u2019s coming in the next month, but it\u2019s really a backwards-looking indicator. The cardboard box industry is one of those really good ones that sort of tells us a future-looking indicator.\u201d<\/p>\n
But approaching one of the busiest times of the year, capacity is down by about 10 to 15 percent, which means companies don\u2019t anticipate making as many boxes over the next couple of months to prepare for the holiday season. Another bad sign for America\u2019s economy.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what the problem is,\u201d Wooten said. \u201cThere is no one indicator that will predict a recession. We try to look at a lot of different things. And unfortunately, each thing that you kind of look at just seems to tilt us more towards that direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
This, in tandem with rising inflation and unemployment rates, has some citizens worried about what may come.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is very concerning having a child and thinking about a recession happening and how I\u2019m going to take care of her,\u201d said Morgan Collier, a Blacksburg resident. \u201cThat\u2019s something you always want to be prepared for. Because you obviously don\u2019t want your child to struggle in any type of way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wooten, however, does have some reasons for hope \u2014 even if a recession does happen.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur most recent recessions have really been what I would say is like big-shock-type recessions,\u201d he said. \u201cWe haven\u2019t seen sort of a normal slowdown since the early 2000s. And I think that is a sign that we have a really strong economy overall. We\u2019re not really prepared for sort of the shock economy. A slowdown is a little bit easier to handle because those tend to come back much faster.\u201d<\/p>\n
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