Measured by NY Fed WEI, OECD Weekly Tracker, and Baumeister, Leiva-Leon and Sims WECI.
figure 1: Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) Weekly Economic Index (blue), Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker (tan), Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims US Weekly Economic Conditions Index plus 2% trend (green) Source : Passed by the New York Fed Fred, OECD, Wisioand the authors’ calculations.
The WEI fell from the previous week, from 2.8% to 2.1%, while the Weekly Tracker continued to rise. It is not surprising that this divergence has come to an end in recent weeks, given the vast difference in methodologies. WEI relies on correlations of ten series (eg, unemployment claims, fuel sales, retail sales) available at weekly frequencies. Weekly Tracker – 2.0% – is a “big data” approach that uses Google Trends and machine learning to track GDP.
If the 2.1% reading continued throughout the quarter, the WEI reading of 2.1% for the week ended October 1 could be interpreted as a quarterly growth rate of 2.1%. The OECD Weekly Tracker reading of 2% can be interpreted as a 2% annual growth rate as of October 1 (the series is down significantly from the last release).This Baumeister et al. The 3.4% reading was interpreted as beating the long-term trend growth rate of 1.4%. The average growth rate of US GDP from 2000-19 was about 2%, so that would imply a growth rate of 3.4% for the year ended October 1.
Since these are year-over-year growth rates, we may be in a recession in the first half because an observer The suggestion was made more than a month ago, but it (still) seems unlikely.
