I spent most of Thursday morning poring over the various reports and talking to economists, trying to discern the signal amid all the noise. In the end, I didn’t write anything (although my colleagues in the Washington bureau did include several of the datapoints in an article about how the Trump administration is grappling with the uncertain economy). Sometimes, the best way to serve readers is to wait for more evidence.

When my colleagues and I do write, our goal is to synthesize all that conflicting evidence into a coherent story — one that makes sense to readers, while acknowledging the complexity inherent in a $20 trillion economy. At the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism of the City University of New York, where I teach a class on economics reporting, I often tell my students that caveats are a central element of any economics story; we don’t have the luxury of waiting until all the answers are clear.

That is especially true at moments like these. By most measures, the economy is in a good place — the unemployment rate is low, wages are rising and consumers are confident. But growth has slowed, and risks are mounting. Adding to the challenge: The indicators that have done the best job historically of identifying recessions are at odds about how concerned we should be.

Writing about those risks requires a delicate balance. We don’t want to be alarmist, which could needlessly undermine confidence in the economy and even contribute to a downturn. But there are consequences to complacency, too. Media outlets, including The Times, were criticized for failing to recognize the seeds of the financial crisis more than a decade ago.

The language of economics is data, and my stories are often peppered with numbers and charts. But my focus is on the people behind the numbers. Even now, when the economy is good, plenty of people are struggling; we want to tell their stories, too. And when the next recession hits, as it inevitably will, we’ll be here to document the causes and the consequences — whether the experts saw it coming or not.

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