Most standard definitions of stagflation require three things at the same time: high inflation, stagnant/negative real growth, and high unemployment.(britannica.com)

From 2022 through 2025, the U.S. clearly had high inflation for a time, but growth and the labor market never fit a stagflation profile:

• Real GDP growth was positive and reasonably solid after the pandemic rebound: about 2.5% in 2022, 2.9% in 2023, and 2.8% in 2024; 2.0% in 2025.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Inflation peaked around 9.1% in June 2022 but then fell steadily; by late 2024 it was around 3%, and mid‑2025 readings were in the 2–3% range, much closer to the Fed’s target than to “stagflation” territory.(en.wikipedia.org)
• Unemployment stayed low by historical standards, around 3.5–3.7% in 2022–2023, rising only to roughly 4–4.4% in 2024–2025, still far below the high joblessness characteristic of past stagflation episodes.(en.wikipedia.org)

There was a brief two‑quarter GDP contraction in early 2022 while inflation was high, which led to talk of a “technical recession,” but even then job growth was strong and unemployment remained very low—conditions Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others explicitly contrasted with a typical recession or stagflation scenario.(wfae.org) Many analysts at the time emphasized that the U.S. had “two of the three ingredients for stagflation” (high inflation and weak growth) but not high unemployment, and therefore did not meet stagflation criteria.(investor.vanguard.com)

By 2024–2025, major central‑bank and market commentary was still treating stagflation mainly as a risk or a potential future scenario, not as something that had already occurred. The Cleveland Fed, for example, notes that the last major U.S. stagflation episode remains the mid‑1970s, not the 2020s.(clevelandfed.org)

Given the prediction’s time frame (“within the next few years” from late 2021) and the data through late 2025, the U.S. has not actually experienced a renewed stagflation episode. High inflation did materialize, but it was accompanied by continued real growth and relatively low unemployment. On that basis, Sacks’s forecast that the U.S. was on a trajectory to produce stagflation in the near term is best judged wrong.