Claudia Sahm
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Claudia Sahm
Courtesy of Sahm ConsultingAs the U.S. economy was shutting down in March 2020, Claudia Sahm was on Capitol Hill briefing House Democrats on how to handle fiscal relief during the Covid-19 crisis.
Sahm, a former Federal Reserve economist who is now the founder of Sahm Consulting, has been a leading adviser to lawmakers since the coronavirus pandemic began, offering input on stimulus checks and aspects of the Cares Act, which passed in March 2020.
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She is perhaps best known for her eponymous Sahm Rule, which she developed while she was at the Fed and which signals the start of a recession: Whenever the three-month average in the unemployment rate rises 0.5 percentage points above its low from the previous year, the U.S. is entering into a formal downturn. The Sahm Rule isn’t indicating the economy is in recession as of now.
Sahm got her bachelor’s degree in economics from Denison University, where she also studied political science and German, and went on to earn an economics Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.
She first got into economics as an undergraduate because she fell in love with the idea “that economists could do good,” she says, especially by working in public policy. “So that’s what I did.”
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