Along with the release of personal income and spending, we have real consumption through February (-0.1% vs. 0.0% m/m consensus) and personal income; real manufacturing and trade sales are also released today.Below, I have added the third release of Q4 2022 GDP (discussed in the context of GDO and GDP+) to the series of charts on key business cycles followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dates Committee yesterday’s post).
figure 1: Nonfarm payrolls, NFP (dark blue), Bloomberg 3/31 consensus (blue+), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding 2012 China transfers (green), manufacturing and Trade Sales Ch.2012 USD (black), Ch.2012 USD Consumption (light blue) and Ch.2012 USD Monthly GDP (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Q3 Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Federal Reserve, BEA 2022Q4 3rd release, from FRED, S&P Global/IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (published March 1, 2023), and authors’ calculations.
Data available as of March 25 Weekly Economic Indicators (Lewis-Mertens-Stock) (see Discussion here) means a y/y increase of 1.47%, implying a 2.37% q/q increase in the first quarter. gross domestic product As of today, Q1 SAAR was up 2.9% sequentially, and S&P Market Intelligence/formerly IHS Markit has raised its tracking estimate to 1.8% from 0.8% (q/q SAAR), all due to higher-than-expected consumption .
There are concerns that labor market measurements are off track, especially with regard to the institutional survey series.Recently released QCEW data dispel some of these concerns (see this post). However, for completeness, consider the Philadelphia Fed Coincidence Index (based primarily on labor market data including wages and salaries), the ADP Private NFP Employment Series (based on a completely different data set than the BLS agency survey), and civilian employment Series adjusted to the NFP concept (based on household surveys).
figure 2: Coincidence index (blue), civilian employment adjusted according to NFP concept (tan) and ADP non-farm payroll series (green), all logarithmic, 2021M11=0. Sources: Philadelphia Fed, ADP via FRED, BLS and authors’ calculations.
