In This Economy?

Kyla Scanlon is an economic commentator and author and the founder of Kyla Labs. She writes about money, markets, and the systems that shape them for an audience of over one million people across TikTok, Instagram, Substack, and YouTube, covering the pressing issues of the day—including tariffs, artificial intelligence, energy markets, and why the traditional rungs of the economic ladder have gotten harder to climb. Her debut book, In This Economy? How Money and Markets Really Work, was a New York Times bestseller and used hand-drawn diagrams to make the machinery of the economy clear. In her newsletter, she coined the term “vibecession” to describe the disconnect between strong economic data and negative public sentiment—a concept since referenced by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and taken up in research by former CEA chair Jared Bernstein. Raised in Kentucky, Scanlon studied finance, economics, and data analytics at Western Kentucky University. She started out trading options and selling cars, where she first saw how inaccessible finance had become to the people it affected most. She began making whiteboard videos and comedy skits to decode markets and economic trends for everyday audiences (and often dressed up as Jerome Powell). She writes monthly for New York Times Opinion, has a video partnership with Foreign Policy, and is a contributor and analyst at CNN. She is also a senior fellow at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator and a research fellow at the American Institute of Boys and Men. Scanlon was named to Barron’s 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance and the TIME100 Creators list, and has appeared on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Ezra Klein Show. At work on her second book, she lives in the mountains with her dog, Piglet.