TrendMacro conversation with Kyla Scanlon, the TikTok economics influencer who diagnosed the “vibecession”

Kyla Scanlon started doing TikTok videos on economics during the pandemic. Her 2022 diagnosis of a “vibecession” – a business cycle expansion that feels like a recession to most people – went viral and got her into the New York Times and led to a book contract, activating a mutually supportive ecosystem of new-media reach and old-media credibility. Her audience is 20 to 40 year olds, skewing male. Gen-Z lacks knowledge of economics or personal finance, and has come to see speculative episodes like GameStop as emblematic of investing – exacerbated by the gamification of investing by firms like Robin Hood. The “vibecession” paradox is in part due to this knowledge gap, in which, for example, people confuse the affordability problems they face, based on past inflation, with claims that inflation has been conquered as a going-forward matter. Now as the labor market is weakening, present conditions are starting to match the long-standing gloomy vibe. Policies and programs could be put in place to understand and address consumers’ deepest frustrations with, for example, subsidized affordable child-care enabling broader labor force participation.