In Reply to: Are you visiting sex workers less often? posted by mh on August 25, 2025 at 08:59:20
The sex worker index has been around for years. From what I understand, the correlation is very mixed. At best, there is a slight correlation.
Here is a UC Berkeley paper on it. They are more bullish than what I've read in the past.
"However, sex workers could have warned economists years before the recession actually occurred. In a study funded by the U.S. government on the economics of the commercial sex industry, researchers found that in all but two of the seven cities, the size of the underground commercial sex economy shrunk from 2003 to 2007, right before the recession fully consumed America. This decline in consumption of the products and services of the sex industry brings us back to examining consumer spending; the decreased revenue of sexual laborers served as an indicator of declining public equity during these years that was caused by the collapse of the housing market, which ultimately resulted in the 2008 recession."
The problem IMO is a lack of data points. Also, the market is not necessarily rational.
I feel like I see this article written every 6 months since economist tend to overestimate how many recessions we have.