Here’s a picture of several key macro indicators, followed by NBER BCDC, including today’s employment data and monthly GDP, as well as yesterday’s consumption and manufacturing/trade industry sales data. The recovery continues.
figure 1: Nonfarm payrolls (dark blue), Bloomberg consensus for February NFP (blue+), industrial production (red), 2012 dollars excluding transferred personal income (green), manufacturing and 2012 dollars Trade sales (black), consumption of Ch.2012$ (light blue) and monthly GDP of Ch.2012$ (pink), all normalized to 2020M02=0. NBER defines recession dates, peaks and valleys, shades of gray. Sources: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (published April 1, 2022), NBER, and author’s calculations.
Payrolls came in slightly below the Bloomberg consensus (431K vs. 490K), but figures from previous months were revised upwards.
figure 2: Nonfarm payrolls released in March (light blue), February (red), January (red), December 21 (pink), all in ‘000’s, sa, seasonally adjusted, by Logarithmic representation. Source: BLS via FRED, various years.
The rise in alternative measures has boosted confidence that employment will continue to increase.
image 3: Non-farm payroll (NFP) employment (black), civilian employment (green), civilian employment adjusted to NFP concepts (red), private NFP (pink), and private NFP from ADP (light blue), all in the 000s , sa, scale in the log. Recession dates as defined by NBER are shaded from peak to trough in gray. Sources: BLS (via FRED), BLS, ADP (via FRED), and NBER.
While employment continues to rise, some industries are still lagging their pre-peak levels.from China Eastern Airlines today:
resource: CEA, April 1, 2022.
Leisure and hospitality employment was 1.6 million below the NBER peak.
Having said that, the now forecast for 2022Q1 points to slower growth: GDPNow at 1.5% vs. 0.2% as tracked by IHS MarkIt (both 4/1).
