The Fed's suggestion of 3 rate cuts down to 4.5% are still quite high compared to the period of a decade of essentially ZIRP that preceded it. The futures mark

The Fed's suggestion of 3 rate cuts down to 4.5% are still quite high compared to the period of a decade of essentially ZIRP that preceded it. The futures market expectation of 6 rate cuts is likely equivalent to a bet that there will be a recession by the year's end. Either way you have "end-of-cheap-money" conditions or "recession" conditions and so the ZIRP-fueled hiring boom needs to get reversed. Honestly I don't think there's much of a distinction and that the end-of-cheap-money leads to these kinds of layoffs which will eventually trigger a recession, combined with vulnerable sectors of the economy (commercial real estate, private equity) popping. For all the fanfare that we've managed to hit a soft landing, the historically based fed-cycle recession predictions were always that a recession typically comes 6-12 months after the Fed STOPS hiking rates -- which means this July.