With the release in January 2023 employment situation release Combined with benchmark revisions, we have the following picture of business cycle indicators, which include the NBER Business Cycle Dates Committee as well as the IHS Markit/SP Global Monthly GDP (released on Wednesday):
figure 1: Non-farm payrolls, NFP (dark blue), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in China 2012 (green), manufacturing and trade sales in China 2012 (black) , consumption Ch.2012$ (light blue) and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Q3 Source: BLS, Fed, BEA, from FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (published 1 February 2023) and authors’ calculations.
While one has to be careful (as always, but especially when incorporating new population controls) the household survey employment series (see here postal), I think it is hard to say that the economy has declined significantly in Dec/Jan.
