Measured by NY Fed WEI, OECD Weekly Tracker, and Baumeister, Leiva-Leon and Sims WECI.
figure 1: Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) Weekly Economic Index (blue), Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker (tan), Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims US Weekly Economic Conditions Index plus 2% trend (green) Source : Passed by the New York Fed Fred, OECD, Wisioand the authors’ calculations.
The WEI recovered to 2.7% from 1.9% last week, while the Weekly Tracker continued to rise. To be fair, there is some disagreement, which is not surprising as the methodologies vary widely. WEI relies on correlations of ten series (eg, unemployment claims, fuel sales, retail sales) available at weekly frequencies. Weekly Tracker – 1.1% – is a “big data” approach that uses Google Trends and machine learning to track GDP.
If the 2.7% reading continued throughout the quarter, the 2.7% WEI reading for the week ended September 24 could be interpreted as a 2.7% quarterly increase. The OECD Weekly Tracker reading of 1.1% can be interpreted as a year-on-year growth rate of 1.1% to 9/24 (the series is down significantly from the previous version).This Baumeister et al. The 1.2% reading was interpreted as beating the long-term trend growth rate of 1.2%. The average growth rate of US GDP from 2000-19 was about 2%, so that would imply a growth rate of 3.2% as of 9/24.
Since these are year-over-year growth rates, we may be in a recession in the first half because an observer suggested a month ago, but it (still) seems unlikely.
