Curious if we could predict a recession, and without ChatGPT’s assistance, I compiled total comments from HN's who is hiring? threads since November 2019. According to Wikipedia, Chinese gov’t records suggest the first COVID infection occurred then.

Numbers are total comments and estimate is >90% of comments are job posts. Summary: February 2023 comments are less than half of the peak in 2021 when several months had >1000 comments.

2023: 2/23 = 465, 1/23 = 533

2022: 12/22 = 576, 11/22 = 635, 10/22 = 560, 9/22 = 618, 8/22 = 761, 7/22 = 617, 6/22 = 852, 5/22 = 844, 4/22 = 798, 3/22 = 869, 2/22 = 883, 1/22 = 766

2021: 12/21 = 832, 11/21 = 1019, 10/21 = 852, 9/21 = 968, 8/21 = 907, 7/21 = 987, 6/21 = 1041, 5/21 = 925, 4/21 = 970, 3/21 = 964, 2/21 = 1052, 1/21 = 848

2020: 12/20 = 767, 11/20 = 808, 10/20 = 811, 9/20 = 698, 8/20 = 828, 7/20 = 681, 6/20 = 659, 5/20 = 686, 4/20 = 601, 3/23/20 = 786, 3/20 = 776, 2/20 = 677, 1/20 = 697

2019: 12/19 = 673, 11/19 = 742

OpenAI employees, watch for this flood of ChatGPT prompts: how to gamble on stocks with HN hiring data?