Evidence since May 2022 indicates that the U.S. did not enter an officially recognized recession, nor did it experience a sustained stagflationary episode.

• No official recession after 2020: The National Bureau of Economic Research’s business-cycle chronology still shows the last U.S. recession as the COVID-19 downturn, February–April 2020, with no additional peaks/troughs dated after that period. FRED and NBER’s own tables, which are updated as new recessions are declared, likewise list no post‑2020 recession dates. (nber.org)
• Growth remained positive overall: Real GDP grew about 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023, and 2.8% in 2024, indicating continued expansion rather than the broad, sustained contraction associated with a recession. (worldeconomics.com) While preliminary data once showed two negative quarters in early 2022, later revisions reduced this to a single clearly negative quarter (Q1 2022) followed by resumed growth, and mainstream analysis and NBER did not classify 2022 as a recession. (cnbc.com) Q1 2025 saw a small contraction (about –0.2/–0.3% annualized), but GDP then rebounded strongly in Q2 2025, again avoiding a sustained downturn. (investopedia.com)
• Inflation fell instead of persistent stagflation: Inflation was indeed high in 2022 (about 8% on an annual-average CPI basis), but then declined to 4.1% in 2023, 2.9% in 2024, and roughly 2.7% in 2025, returning close to the Federal Reserve’s target range. (usinflationcalculator.com) Over the same period, real GDP growth remained positive, contradicting the classic stagflation pattern of prolonged high inflation combined with flat or contracting output.
• Official and international assessments describe a soft landing, not stagflationary recession: IMF Article IV assessments and major economic commentary characterize the 2022–2024 period as one of resilient growth with inflation coming down, explicitly noting that the U.S. economy “dodged” or “skirted” the widely expected recession. (imf.org)

Friedberg’s prediction was that the U.S. was “inevitably going to run into a recession” in the near term due to stagflation. With the benefit of data through late 2025, the U.S. has not had a formally dated recession since 2020, growth has remained positive on an annual basis, and inflation has fallen substantially rather than staying elevated alongside weak growth. On standard economic definitions and official dating, the prediction is therefore wrong.