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Falling demand for cardboard boxes — long a proxy for consumer spending — is raising concerns about the US economy
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- Title
- Recession warning seen in demand for cardboard boxes
- Published
- Apr 3 2026
- Word count
- 342 words
From the article:
More evidence that the AI-driven stock market indicia fall to disclose serious weaknesses in the U.S. economy. The accuracy of Bureau of Labor Statistics job numbers is under threat. The article mentions that the cardboard box statistics have been used as a leading indicator for recessions since at least Alan Greenspan's era in the Federal Reserve, and it's not dependent on a potentially politicized or hype-driven measure.
What an odd way to say 100,000. Maybe they're trying to make it on the same scale as the original number.
Odd indeed, but if they were intentionally keeping the same scale I applaud them for it!
I live and breathe numeric and statistical work and I still read 100,000 as a bigger relative proportion of 163M than 0.1M. Obviously I know they’re the same number, but my brain is absolutely still doing the “ton of feathers/ton of bricks” thing in the background.
I'd wish metrics like these would be taken as people buying less stuff, going for used, and producing less waste etc.
Nevertheless, its an interesting proxy.
It can be both - people doing the sustainable, better value thing is just bad for the economy as currently configured and measured. Not bad for the day to day quality of life for most people, but that’s unfortunately a secondary metric at best as far as anyone measuring is concerned.
In this case it’s obviously also an issue because it’s not like people have all had a collective epiphany about the importance of reducing their footprint, they just can’t afford things. But if people were intentionally spending less we’d still be bombarded by discussion of what a terrible thing that is - similar to the outright predictions of doom we’re seeing about the upcoming decline of population in a lot of countries, actually.
I think the idea that sustainability is bad for economic metrics is a misunderstanding. If people were spending less and hoarding the savings under a mattress, that would be bad for the economy.
If people were spending less on gasoline and landfilling less stuff, and used the savings to enrich their lives in other ways - eating out more, going to theater, going to watch local bands, etc - that would be good for the economy by being a higher proportion of local spending and more long-term sustainable.
That’s fair, there definitely are ways to shift the balance more sustainably - I was simplifying for sure, and honestly feeling a bit grumpy and cynical when I wrote that!
I will say that I genuinely believe that pulling out a significant proportion of the pointless work in the world (defined by me as “moves money around without meaningfully improving net quality of life”) would be borderline catastrophic without some pretty serious economic reforms, though. From the studies I’ve seen you’d be looking at 30-50% of all working hours across the population going away overnight - even tackling just a portion of that, and restructuring rather than removing where possible, is going to be somewhere between “2008 was a blip compared to this” and “the entire industrial revolution” in terms of impact.
The thing is, as far as I see it, that's got to happen at some point. Our entire economic system is built on constant growth, which was all well and good whilst the population of the world continued to increase; we could create more value, we could generate more profit, we could keep the line trending up. Population rise is stagnating hard, and that results in a greater and greater proportion of the productivity of an individual needing to be utilised in support of propping up the fable of infinite growth.
Life is getting increasingly hard for the individual, we see companies turn more towards misleading and lobbying to continue to drive profits and growth.
It's not sustainable, and, as far as I can tell, collapse of the entire economic system is inevitable unless we tackle it and seriously reform how we approach life.
We can only create so many bullshit jobs, we can only extract 24 hours a day of productivity from a person at the absolute maximum. What happens when the next bubble demands more from humanity than it's got to give?
Couldn't agree more, and it's a genuine worry to me because major change doesn't tend to happen without an enormous amount of turmoil - whether it would functionally need to in an ideal world or not.
The first thing I thought of when I saw the headline is that Amazon uses a lot of cardboard but they started shipping in boxes that are custom-sized for the items they are shipping. I believe they have machines that can cut and fold to spec at the point of shipping. This must save them a lot of waste.
The article mentions lighter packing but not this.
This and the increase of amazon just shipping box-less. Anecdotally, I'm getting more of my shipments either in a clear bag or in the manufacturer's packaging with no additional amazon box.
I've noticed this too, and that Amazon has an opt-in now for packaging. I dislike them sending stuff in original packaging for so many reasons not least of which is that a lot of original packaging isn't made to handle rain.
I wonder if there is a corresponding metric of thrift store traffic. I've noticed that the local Goodwills and Salvation Armys seem to be very busy here recently, and just in the past few weeks I've seen news that two new Goodwill locations are opening. There has also been a increase in flea markets in my area too.
I love these goofy little indicators people come up with.
Like the pizza index that measures the traffic to pizza joints around the Pentagon as a sign that military action is imminent.
That's the classic, with the no 2 spot going to waffle house closures being used to track hurricanes. There was a Dublin newspaper that would send someone up to the roof once a week after Brexit happened, to count the number of cranes visible as an indicator of how much business we were poaching from the UK.
Let's not forget the bad Yankee Candle reviews tracking covid.
So many memories! Many of them kind of bad, if these examples are any indication.