From \u201cRecession Blonde: How Economic Uncertainty Spurred the Latest Hair Color Trend\u201d<\/a>, March 17th:<\/p>\n Recession blonde (or recession brunette) refers to the darker, more brown-tinted hue that many are letting grow in with their normally bright, golden strands. TikTok users explain that while it may look like \u201cold-money blonde,\u201d letting\u00a0their natural roots grow<\/a>\u00a0actually points to how the economy is\u00a0affecting their spending habits<\/a>; many are opting out of their touch-up appointments to save money.<\/p>\n While cost still depends on where you get your color done, upkeep for blonde hair can be quite the investment and oftentimes the more expensive option. \u201cThere are so many complexities to being blonde, and so many different methods to get to the end goal,\u201d celebrity colorist\u00a0Jenna Perry<\/a>\u00a0tells\u00a0Vogue<\/em>. \u201cA double process, hyper blonde, is one of the most labor-intensive on your colorist to provide the biggest blonde impact. Highlights generally feel more natural, although the final may look effortless. A skilled application is akin to that of a trained painter and [cost] ranges depending on your colorist as well.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2026<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n I personally have not noticed this trend, although that doesn\u2019t mean much. I tried to find data on hair salon expenditures, but the closest I could get at fairly high frequency is the BEA\u2019s \u201cpersonal care and clothing services\u201d category. I plot the log ratio of the real measure of personal care services to total real consumption (keeping in mind these are chained quantities).<\/p>\n Figure 1:<\/strong> Log ratio of personal care and clothing services to total consumption, in Ch.2017$ (blue). NBER defined peak-to-trough recession dates shaded gray. Source: BEA, and author\u2019s calculations.<\/em><\/p>\n The recent peak is at 2024Q1, and has been declining since then (through 2024Q4). How reliable are such indicators? This real series goes back only to 2007Q1 at the quarterly frequency; however, as discussed in this post<\/a>, Michele Andreolli, Natalie S. Rickard, and Paolo Surico have conducted a more formal analysis, in \u201cNon-Essential Business Cycles\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n From the abstract:<\/p>\n Using newly constructed time series of consumption, prices and earnings in essential and non-essential sectors, we document three main empirical regularities on post-WWII U.S. data: (i) spending on non-essentials is more sensitive to the business-cycle than spending on essentials; (ii) earnings in non-essential sectors are more cyclical than in essential sectors; (iii) low-earners are more likely to work in non-essential industries. We develop and estimate a structural model with non-homothetic preferences over two expenditure goods, hand-to-mouth consumers and heterogeneity in labour productivity that is consistent with these findings. We use the model to revisit the transmission of monetary policy and find that the interaction of cyclical product demand composition and cyclical labour demand composition greatly amplifies business-cycle fluctuations.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Here\u2019s a key picture.<\/p>\n Source:<\/strong>\u00a0Andreolli et al (2024)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n
What is \u201crecession blonde?\u201d<\/h2>\n
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