The 2020s got off to a rocky start. In 2020, the U.S. suffered job losses of unprecedented magnitude as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2021, thanks to the end of the stay-at-home mandates, and a population flush with stimulus money, the economy recovered so rapidly that it overheated, creating an acute shortage of labor and rapid inflation. In 2022, the Fed responded to 40-year high inflation with a steady diet of interest rate increases, the fastest interest-rate increase cycle on record. In 2023, both the labor market and inflation have cooled, setting us up for what many economists believed was a low-probability scenario, “the soft landing.”