It’s Will Smith announcing a new album. It’s “Mamma Mia!” returning to Broadway. It’s the uptick in law school applications.

And it’s absolutely spring breaking in Houston.

In recent weeks, as the finance world has been nervously watching the S&P 500 fall, nonexperts and the chronically online are seeing signs of a possible recession in daily activities and choices. To them, a recession looks like visiting the Asian elephant exhibit at the Houston Zoo nearby instead of traveling to Asia. Or the rising interest in torts law and a decrease in creative movies.

Posts on X and TikTok with the hashtag #recessionindicator are mostly jokes or even cheeky insults about activities seen as cheap. But they also reflect public interest in how pop culture and trends might be affected by economic uncertainty, experts say.

Sequels are an easy target for the label of “recession indicator.” For some, the announcement of a fourth season of “Ted Lasso” or a sequel to “Freaky Friday” signaled that studios were tightening purse strings instead of greenlighting risky, innovative material.

“It is kind of funny to think that Jason Sudeikis is having trouble paying off his third pool, so he’s like, ‘Time to put the mustache back on!’” Rob McRae, 39, a podcast producer, said referring to the actor who plays the show’s title character.

Of course, movies, television shows and albums are pitched and planned well before they are announced, making them lagging indicators of the economy. If anything, the songs and movies released down the line could reflect today’s economic situation.

“We may be booming in two years, but you will see the scarring effects of this,” Kenneth Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard, said in an interview. “You’re kind of seeing now decisions that were made a few years ago.”

A better gauge of consumers’ concerns could be their habits. “If you bring liquor to the get-together, are yall taking the remainder of yall liquor at the end?” asked one X user. The question immediately became fodder for the trend and circulated widely. One popular reply was “Yes & even before the recession.”

Professor Rogoff chuckled at the hypothetical, though he found this scenario unlikely (an indication that he has never partied with journalists). But the nugget of truth is that people tend to eat out less and spend less on gifts when they are concerned about a recession.

The #recessionindicator meme is, in many ways, a repackaging of well-known academic theories. Take the “hemline index,” which posits that skirts get longer as the economy slows. Hair length and chocolate sales have also been analyzed as possible reflections of consumer sentiment.

Terry F. Pettijohn II, a professor of psychology at Coastal Carolina University, has spent more than two decades studying how the economy affects people’s decision-making.

“When social and economic times are more difficult, we prefer music that is slower, more romantic, more meaningful lyrics,” Professor Pettijohn said in an interview this month. “And when times are good, we prefer music that is more upbeat, fun, with less meaningful lyrics.”

It is not a perfect system. The top song of 2008 was the dance party anthem “Low” by Flo Rida. Maybe listeners heard “Stock market got low, low, low, low, low, low, low, low”?

Sometimes, even the upbeat music incorporates themes of the moment, such as Timbaland’s 2007 song “The Way I Are,” which starts with the line “I ain’t got no money.”

Today’s music charts are filled with slower, more meaningful songs and ballads, reflecting the economic strain, Professor Pettijohn argued.

He named Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” and “Wildflower,” as well as “Die With a Smile” by Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars, as examples. Indeed, Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars are wildly popular artists and their song might have spent 30 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart regardless of the economic backdrop.

But an overall mood shift has become clearer.

This month, a Doechii song initially released in 2019 landed on the Billboard Hot 100. The title? “Anxiety.” The beat? Sampled from the 2011 hit song “Somebody That I Used to Know.” Well, that’s basically a sequel. #recessionindicator.

As soon as he arrives to his office, just before 8 a.m. each day, Xander Maddox makes his way to the kitchen and lounge area, where large windows drench the space with ample natural lighting.

Usually his colleagues aren’t yet in at that hour, so he makes himself a cup of coffee and positions his phone in front of the window with the camera on and facing him. Then he hits record and steps back to capture the day’s outfit:

A black leather jacket.

A bright blue sweater from COS, Margiela loafers and two cups of Raisin Bran for breakfast.

A white T-shirt, gray pants and cherry red Nike Air Rifts, which he described as “a calm office fit.”

The whole process takes about five minutes. Then he has to upload.

“I try to do the same routine every day just to make it cohesive,” he said in a phone interview.

Mr. Maddox, a 31-year-old executive assistant at a finance company in Jersey City, N.J., isn’t doing this as part of his day job, but for his side hustle as a fashion content creator on TikTok, where hundreds find inspiration in the looks he put together.

Fashion influencing is a billion-dollar business, by some estimates, and many creators aspire to make it their full-time job. But for office-style influencers, their side hustle depends on their main hustle. They’re working at — and showcasing — their style at their real-life offices: law firms, tech companies, call centers, advertising agencies. Several times a week, they discreetly find the perfect spot in their break rooms or restrooms to record their ensembles for the internet.

After all, where else are you supposed to shoot #professionalfashion, #officeootd and #workfashioninspo videos but at an actual office?

In conversations with around half a dozen office-wear influencers in recent days, one thing was clear: You do have to time it right.

And posting your style at the office can backfire. Last week, McLaurine Pinover, the spokeswoman for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, came under fire after CNN reported on her workplace-style influencer videos, filmed in her office and posted on Instagram as her agency oversaw the layoffs of thousands of federal workers as part of an order by the Trump administration. She deleted her Instagram account, @getdressedwithmc, soon after the news outlet reached out to her.

“There’s a lot of emotions around the government and the state of the world we’re in right now, so I think you got to read the room,” Mr. Maddox said of Ms. Pinover’s case. “If you are in a highly visible job and you’re doing something that seems to be insensitive to the masses, then you’ve got to be able to have that common sense.”

As someone who is 5-foot-10 and broadly built, Mr. Maddox said he had to be meticulous with his shopping, prioritizing pants and shirts that would fit his frame. He would describe his style as “cozy, but elevated” and aims to inspire men, especially those with his body type, who want to express personal style in the office. Many of his colleagues follow him online with enthusiasm and support, he said. They haven’t spoken about it directly, but Mr. Maddox said he was also pretty confident that is boss was OK with it.

“As long as it doesn’t affect work,” he said, adding that his boss has a large social media presence as the chief executive of the company.

Five years after the coronavirus pandemic sent many employees home to log into meetings in loungewear, including new college graduates who began their professional careers on their couches, many are still unsure how to show up for work.

“After Covid, people didn’t know how to dress, because I definitely had no clue,” said Whitney Grett, a 27-year-old I.T. account manager for a staffing company in Houston. “Everyone was wearing sweatshirts the first year.”

Ms. Grett joined her current workplace remotely in early 2021, several months after she graduated from college. She was excited when it was time to return to the office and she could experiment with different ways to dress for work. Last summer, after receiving compliments from her co-workers about her outfits, she decided to start sharing her work looks on TikTok.

“It got to the point where I was like, I guess I’ll just start posting these because it just gave me another hobby to do, honestly,” she said.

In her videos, which are seen by thousands, Ms. Grett poses in front of the glass doors of an unoccupied conference room to capture her look for the day. She and a work friend usually meet up with a tripod around lunchtime to avoid foot traffic. Sometimes they have to wait until the end of the day to shoot if the office is really busy.

“I get some comments from people being like, ‘Oh, I could never do that,’ and I’m like, ‘I understand,’” she said. “I have a very supportive team — I’m not the first one who posted videos from the office before. I think they’re happy that I keep it to a little room.”

According to Jaehee Jung, a professor of fashion and apparel studies at the University of Delaware, office-wear content is popular today because younger audiences, especially ones that started their careers in a hybrid work world, are desperate for guidance on a very basic question: How should I dress for work?

“You’re not at home, so you do have to think about what are some of the rules that could be considered in the working environment,” she said. “Because depending on the profession and industry, you do have some different etiquettes, different tolerance of formality.”

According to Professor Jung, shooting office-wear content in an actual office offers influencers one major advantage: being automatically perceived as an expert. That generic conference room décor proves that someone hired them to work in an office, so they must know something about getting dressed for one.

Vianiris Abreu, a 30-year-old human-resources manager at an advertising agency in Manhattan, said one of the reasons she began posting office wear on TikTok in 2021, when she returned to an office, was that she had missed dressing up for work. Working in a somewhat nontraditional environment allowed her to be more innovative in her dress than many would expect.

“Perhaps what I wear is not something that all H.R. people wear, but it’s definitely normal being that I work in the advertising industry,” she said, adding that she doesn’t divulge too much online about where she works and what she does.

Ms. Abreu said that shooting in the office — she usually spends about 15 minutes a day recording what will become a seven-second clip on TikTok — comes off as more authentic.

“I think for me, the aesthetic of the office is very pretty, and the engagement seems to be higher,” she said. “But I also think it just shows me in the office, which is the whole point of it.”

In many cases, these side gigs can pay off. Last year, Mr. Maddox, the executive assistant in Jersey City, said earned around $2,000 in sponsorships, payments and merchandise from brands. He describes this extra income as “play money.” But he is selective about the work.

“I don’t take every opportunity that comes in because it’s not my full-time job,” he said.