Economists don’t call something a recession until rich people start feeling the squeeze. The definition of a recession, while vague, is really designed around that fact. So even if they’re not doing it on purpose, their analytical blinders prevent them from recognizing other conditions that are at least as meaningful to many more people.
It doesn’t help that wage growth has largely been in the “unskilled” sectors (I hate that term, every job is skilled), but inflation reduction has largely been in non-essential goods. Which means that upper-middle to upper income people have been noticing their wages not increasing with inflation despite inflation overall being lower, and lower to low-middle income people have been noticing inflation impacting their budgets despite their wage increases.
But in aggregate, “everyone” is being paid more and “inflation” is down. So at a macro level everyone “should” be happy with how things are going. But human beings don’t live at the macro level.