Authored by Steven Hansen

EconCurrent‘s Economic Index improved this month but continues to show weak growth. There is a general economic weakness across the board EXCEPT in the area of government and employment. However, except for industrial production (and possibly retail sales) – the data is showing few signs that a recession is coming. Read on to understand the currents affecting our economic growth.

Analyst Summary of this Economic Forecast

This post will summarize the:

• special indicators,
• leading indicators,
• predictive portions of coincident indicators,
• review of the technical recession indicators, and
• interpretation of our own index – EconCurrents Economic Index (EEI) – which is built of mostly non-monetary “things” that have been shown to be indicative of the direction of the Main Street economy at least 30 days in advance.

Special Indicators:

The consumer is almost spending all of their income – the ratio between spending and income is well above the average of the levels seen since the Great Recession. Surely, it is inflation that is causing these high levels – and inflation can trigger recessions.

Seasonally Adjusted Spending’s Ratio to Income (an increasing ratio means the Consumer is spending more of Income)

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

The St. Louis Fed produces a Smoothed U.S. Recession Probabilities Chart which is currently giving no indication of an oncoming recession.

Smoothed recession probabilities for the United States are obtained from a dynamic-factor markov-switching model applied to four monthly coincident variables: non-farm payroll employment, the index of industrial production, real personal income excluding transfer payments, and real manufacturing and trade sales. This model was originally developed in Chauvet, M., “An Economic Characterization of Business Cycle Dynamics with Factor Structure and Regime Switching,” International Economic Review, 1998, 39, 969-996. (http://faculty.ucr.edu/~chauvet/ier.pdf)

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

Sahm Recession Indicator signals the start of a recession when the three-month moving average of the national unemployment rate (U3) rises by 0.50 percentage points or more relative to its low during the previous 12 months.

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

EconCurrents reviews the relationship between the year-over-year growth rate of non-farm private employment and the year-over-year real growth rate of retail sales. This index has returned to negative territory. When retail sales grow faster than the rate of employment gains (above zero on the below graph) – a recession is not imminent. However, this index has many false alarms.

Growth Relationship Between Retail Sales and Non-Farm Private Employment – Above zero suggests economic expansion

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

The growth rate of real gross domestic product (GDP) is the headline view of economic activity, but the official estimate is released with a delay. Atlanta’s Fed GDPNow forecasting model provides a “nowcast” of the official estimate prior to its release. EconCurrents does not believe GDP is a good tool to view what is happening at Main Street level – but there are correlations.

Latest estimate: 0.7 percent — January 27, 2023

The initial GDPNow model estimate for real GDP growth (seasonally adjusted annual rate) in the first quarter of 2023 is 0.7 percent on January 27. The initial estimate of fourth-quarter real GDP growth released by the US Bureau of Economic Analysis on January 26 was 2.9 percent, 0.6 percentage points below the final GDPNow model nowcast released on January 20. Beginning with this update, we are including some technical adjustments to GDPNow, and we document those adjustments here. (You can also read about the adjustments under the Related Resources tab, in the link named Modifications to GDPNow Model Forecast.)

A yield curve inversion historically has been an accurate predictor of an impending recession. A yield curve inversion is where short-term bonds have a higher yield than longer-term bonds. The graph below shows inversions prior to USA recessions. EconCurrents does not believe the yield curve is a reliable indicator of recessions in the New Normal where monetary policy uses extraordinary tools – but like a stopped clock, it can be correct at times.

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

Asset prices have been driven by liquidity. Measuring liquidity (blue line on the graph below) should be a good indicator of inflation. This graph is currently indicating that the Consumer Price Index (CPI) rate of moderation should slow in the coming months (red line on the graph below).

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

Continuing the discussion on inflation, it is now beginning to take up a sizeable chunk of the federal budget. Unfortunately, the graph below is updated only quarterly – and is now complete through 4Q2022. It does show that in 4Q2022, 13.8% of federal expenditure went to interest payments on debt – up from 12.2% in 3Q2022. It is not a major deal yet but could be if it starts approaching the previous high of 23.5% in 1Q1991.

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

The Leading Indicators:

The leading indicators are for the most part monetary-based. EconCurrents’ primary worry in using monetary-based methodologies to forecast the economy is the accommodative monetary policy which may (or may not) be affecting historical relationships.

EconCurrents does not use data from any of the leading indicators in its economic index. Leading indices in this post look ahead six months – and are all subject to backward revision.

The Conference Board’s Leading Economic Indicator (LEI) – the LEI has historically begun contracting well before a recession but has had many false contractions.

Nonfinancial leverage subindex of the National Financial Conditions Index – a weekly index produced by the Chicago Fed signals both the onset and duration of financial crises and their accompanying recessions. EconCurrents now believe this index may be worthless in real-time as the amount of backward revision is excessive – so we present this index for information only. This index was designed to forecast the economy six months in advance. The chart below shows the current index values, and a recession usually occurs months to years after the trend line changes from positive to negative.

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

Predictive Coincident and Lagging Indicators

Here is a run-through of the most economically predictive coincident indices which EconCurrents believes can give up to a six-month warning of an impending recession – and do not have a history of producing false warnings. EconCurrents does not use any of these indicators in its economic forecast.

Consider that every recession has different characteristics and dynamics – and a particular index may not contract during a recession, or start contracting after the recession is already underway.

Truck transport portion of employment – to search for impending recessions. Look at the year-over-year zero growth line. For the last two recessions, it has offered a six-month warning of an impending recession with only one false warning. Transport is an economic warning indicator because it moves goods well before final retail sales occur. Until people stop eating or buying goods, transport will remain one of the primary economic pulse points. When this sector turns robotic in the coming years – this measure will become useless – but currently, the shift from box stores to e-Commerce is creating much more employment in this sector. Either way – this index may not be capable of alerting the next recession. Transport employment growth is above the zero growth line. As transport provides a six-month recession warning – the implication is that any possible recession is more than six months away.

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

Business Activity ISM US Services Activity Index – this index is noisy. The index is now above 55 (below 55 is a warning that a recession might occur, whilst below 50 is almost proof a recession is underway). This index may not provide timely warnings of recessions.

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US Treasury Tax Receipts – Tax receipts’ year-over-year growth generally goes negative during a recession. Currently, tax receipts’ year-over-year growth is deep in positive territory.

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Census Bureau Index of Economic Activity – The U.S. Census Bureau Index of Economic Activity (IDEA) is an aggregation of 15 of the Census Bureau’s primary economic data series that provides a single time series constructed as a weighted average.

My favorite coincident indicator is the Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) – a monthly index designed to gauge overall economic activity and related inflationary pressure. The index is a weighted average of 85 indicators of growth in national economic activity drawn from four broad categories of data: 1) production and income; 2) employment, unemployment, and hours; 3) personal consumption and housing; and 4) sales, orders, and inventories. Economic forecasting uses the 3-month moving average (blue line on the graph below). It currently is predicting a slowing GDP (GDP is the red line on the graph below).

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

Technical Requirements of a Recession

Sticking to the current technical recession criteria used by the NBER:

The NBER’s traditional definition of a recession is that it is a significant decline in economic activity that is spread across the economy and that lasts more than a few months. The committee’s view is that while each of the three criteria—depth, diffusion, and duration—needs to be met individually to some degree, extreme conditions revealed by one criterion may partially offset weaker indications from another. For example, in the case of the February 2020 peak in economic activity, we concluded that the drop in activity had been so great and so widely diffused throughout the economy that the downturn should be classified as a recession even if it proved to be quite brief. The committee subsequently determined that the trough occurred two months after the peak, in April 2020. 

… The determination of the months of peaks and troughs is based on a range of monthly measures of aggregate real economic activity published by the federal statistical agencies. These include real personal income less transfers (PILT), nonfarm payroll employment, real personal consumption expenditures, wholesale-retail sales adjusted for price changes, employment as measured by the household survey, and industrial production. There is no fixed rule about what measures contribute information to the process or how they are weighted in our decisions.

Data for all indicators can be found and downloaded from FRED, the data website maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. These data series have been collected on a single webpage. However, I have created a graph below looking at the month-over-month change (note that multipliers have been used to make changes more obvious).

Month-over-Month Growth Personal Income minus transfer payments (blue line), Employment (red line), Industrial Production (green line), Business Sales (orange line)

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

In the above graph, if a line falls below 0 (black line) – that sector is contracting from the previous month. Half of the sectors are in positive territory whilst industrial production and retail sales are in negative territory. Another way to look at the same data sets is in the graph below which uses indexed real values from the trough of the Great Recession.

Indexed Growth Personal Income minus transfer payments (red line), Employment (green line), Industrial Production (blue line), Business Sales (orange line)

if the above graph does not appear [click here] to view

EconCurrents believes that the New Normal economy has different dynamics than most economic models are using.

Economic Forecast Data

The EconCurrents Economic Index (EEI) is designed to spot Main Street and business economic turning points. The three-month rolling index value is now a NEGATIVE 0.200 – an improvement from last month’s negative 0.325. The economic forecast is based on the 3-month moving average as the monthly index is very noisy. A positive value of the index represents Main Street’s economic expansion. Readings below 0.4 indicate a weak economy, while readings below 0.0 indicate contraction.

The EEI is a non-monetary-based economic index that counts “things” that have been shown to be indicative of the direction of the Main Street economy. Note that the EconCurrents Economic Index is not constructed to mimic GDP (although there are correlations, the turning points may be different), and tries to model the economic rate of change seen by businesses and Main Street. The vast majority of the inputs to this index use data not subject to backward revision.

The red line on the EEI is the 3-month moving average.

Consumer and business behavior (which is the basis of the EEI) either leads or follows old fashion industrial age measures such as GDP depending on the primary dynamic(s) driving the economy. The Main Street sector of the economy lagged GDP in entering and exiting the 2007 Great Recession.

As EconCurrents continues to backcheck its model, from time-to-time slight adjustments are made to the data sets and methodology to align it with the actual coincident data. To date, when any realignment was done, there have been no changes for trend lines or recession indications. Most changes to date were to remove data sets that had unacceptable backward revisions, became too volatile, or were discontinued.

Analysis of Economic Indicators:

EconCurrents analyzes all major economic indicators and summarizes them in our daily newsletter [sign up here]. The table below contains hyperlinks to the publisher of the indicator. The right column “Predictive” means this particular indicator has a leading component (usually other than the index itself) – in other words, has a good correlation to future economic conditions.