Abstract. The growth of the American economy slowed down in 2022 compared to the strong performance in 2021, but a recession was avoided. A key characteristic of the year was the contradictory movement of the main economic indicators: record high inflation was combined with favorable situation at the labor market, where almost all indicators approached the pre-crisis level, and slow, and in the 1st and 2nd quarters even negative, GDP performance. The main problem in 2022 was a record high inflation rate. The US Federal Reserve finally acknowledged that inflation is not a transitory phenomenon and began a sharp tightening of monetary policy, including an aggressive rate hike. Now the central bank is teetering on a fine line between the need to reduce inflation by tightening monetary policy and the risk of pushing the economy into recession, but considers the negative consequences of inflation as a more serious threat to U.S. economy than unemployment and even a decline in GDP. This sustains some risk of a recession in the United States.