With today’s monthly GDP release, and earlier income and consumption, we have the following series of images, followed by the NBER BCDC.
figure 1: Nonfarm payrolls (dark blue), Bloomberg 6/1 employment consensus (blue+), industrial production (red), 2012 personal income excluding transfers (green), 2012 manufacturing and trade sales ( Black), consumption in January 2012 (light blue) and monthly GDP in 2012 (pink), all log normalized to 2020M02=0. NBER defines the decay date, peak to trough, shades of gray. Sources: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (published June 1, 2022), NBER, and author’s calculations.
Manufacturing and trade sales fell more than I predicted using retail sales, while consumption grew faster than I predicted using retail sales and food services, where Posted in mid-May.
IHS Markit notes:
Gross domestic product rose 0.5% on the month in April, more than a 0.3% drop in March, which was revised up from a previous estimate of a 0.4% drop. April’s monthly GDP growth largely reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures and net exports.
With the second release of official first-quarter GDP and IHS Markit’s monthly GDP, we’ve got the picture below.
figure 2: GDP (blue bar), GDPNow near 6/1 (brown bar) and monthly GDP (black line) in billions of Ch.2012$, SAAR, all on a logarithmic scale. Source: BEA, Q1 Second Edition, Atlanta Fed June 1, 2022, IHS Markets June 1, 2022.
All in all, while monthly GDP was flat from November to March, gains in industrial production, income, consumption and employment in April suggest a recession is not yet imminent.
