Weekly indicators from Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) Weekly Economic Indicators, and Baumeister, Leiva-Leon and Sims WECI, through 12/10; and Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker through 11/26 (not updated).
Figure 1: Lewis-Mertens-Stock Weekly Economic Index (blue), OECD Weekly Tracker (tan), Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims Weekly Economic Conditions Index for US plus 2% trend (green). Source: NY Fed via FRED, OECD, WECI, and author’s calculations.
The deceleration has been pretty consistent over time, and across indicators, with the exception of the Weekly Tracker. The WEI reading for the week ending 12/10 of 0.6% is interpretable as a y/y quarter growth of 0.6% if the 0.6% reading were to persist for an entire quarter. The OECD Weekly Tracker reading of -0.5% is interpretable as a y/y growth rate of -0.5% for year ending 10/26 (this series has not been updated in two weeks, and the interpretation of this reading is in last week’s post). The Baumeister et al. reading of 0.6% is interpreted as a 0.6% growth rate in excess of long term trend growth rate. Average growth of US GDP over the 2000-19 period is about 2%, so this implies a 2.6% growth rate for the year ending 12/10.
Are these most recent readings consistent with an ongoing recession? For reference, I show the same series for early 2020 in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Lewis-Mertens-Stock Weekly Economic Index (blue), OECD Weekly Tracker (tan), Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims Weekly Economic Conditions Index for US plus 2% trend (green). NBER defined recession dates shaded gray. Source: NY Fed via FRED, OECD, WECI, NBER, and author’s calculations.
