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Macroeconomist whose career spanned the Federal Reserve Board and the Council of Economic Advisers. At the Fed she developed the Sahm Rule — a real-time recession indicator that triggers when the three-month average unemployment rate rises 0.5 percentage points or more above its minimum over the prior 12 months. The simplicity and early-warning power of the rule gained it rapid adoption: it has correctly signaled the onset of every US recession since the 1970s when applied retroactively. Became a prominent public voice during the COVID-19 pandemic, advocating forcefully for automatic stabilizers and direct payments to households as a faster and more targeted fiscal response than traditional tax cuts. Wrote extensively about gaps in US economic safety nets and the behavioral economics of household financial decision-making. After leaving the Fed worked as Director of Macroeconomic Research at the Jain Family Institute. Maintains a Substack newsletter and is highly active on Bluesky, where she engages with real-time economic data releases and policy debates.