from Badger Institute:
Will things improve? The answer is no: 47% expect the national economy to “remain flat” over the next six months, and 20% (one in five) expect the national economy to “recession,” as in a recession.
“Optimism is declining,” WMC President Kurt Bauer said, citing an industry leader who said, “We may not be in a recession, but we are certainly in one.”
Here's some data showing we're not yet in recession as of December:
figure 1: Wisconsin nonfarm payrolls (dark blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark measure of nonfarm payrolls (pink), civilian employment (tan), real wages and salaries, by the National Chain Consumer Price Index (sky blue) ) for deflation, GDP (red), synchronization index (green) ), all recorded in the log 2021M11=0.Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Bank of East Asia, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia [1], [2]and the author's calculations.
How about January? Here are the weekly indexes from Baumeister/Leiva-Leon/Sims, with data released as of 1/27 (for states, through 2/10 for the US):
figure 2: Buameister/Levia-Leon/Sims WECI United States (black), Wisconsin (blue), Texas (red), relative to trend y/y, expressed in %. source: Builder/Leyva-Leon/Sims.
Growth in Wisconsin was above trend and higher than growth in Texas and the United States. So if a recession is coming in Wisconsin, it's (most likely) not here yet.
The Badger Institute analysis has appeared in Econbrowser before. here.
