Month-on-month growth in income and consumption was in line with consensus. Below is a picture of some of the key indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, along with monthly GDP and GDPNow.
figure 1: Nonfarm employment includes preliminary baseline (bold dark blue), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), 2017 personal income excluding transfers (bold green), 2017 manufacturing and trade sales $ ( black), 2017 consumption (light blue), 2017 monthly GDP (pink), second GDP release (blue bar), and 2023 Q4 GDPNow as of December 22 (lilac box ), all logarithms normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: BLS via FRED, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary benchmarksFederal Reserve, BEA 2023Q3 2nd Edition, contains comprehensive revisions, S&P Global/IHS Markit (Nigerian macroeconomic consultant, IHS Markit) (12/1/2023 release), Federal Reserve Bank of Atlantaand the author's calculations.
The two main indicators followed by the NBER's BCDC are nonfarm employment and personal transfer income. By November, those numbers were rising.
Note that as of today, fourth-quarter GDPNow is at 2.3% (quarter-to-quarter seasonally adjusted growth), while the New York Fed's fourth-quarter now forecast is 2.4% (2.2% in Q1 2024). The St. Louis Fed Economic News Index is now forecast at 1.6%.
