We've been staving off a recession with little more than sheer denial for quite some time. The Federal Reserve uses unemployment and the consumer price index to gauge economic health but there is a lot that those two metrics can't account for.
Skyrocketing consumer debt, which has been going on for a while, is a concerning statistic which tends to get downplayed until it turns into defaults. By the time people start defaulting on their mortgages, the train is already speeding away without any brakes.