Activity still appears to be picking up on a year-over-year basis. Shown below are the Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) WEI, Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker and Baumeister-Leiva-Leon-Sims Weekly Economic Conditions Index for the United States as of one week ago (September 10):
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) lavender Shading indicates the hypothetical H1 recession date.Source: NY Fed via Fred, OECD, Wisioand the authors’ calculations.
If the reading of 2.6 persists for the entire quarter, the WEI reading for the week ended September 10 was 2.6, which could be interpreted as a 2.6% y/y quarterly increase. The OECD Weekly Tracker reading of 2.1 translates into an average annual growth rate of 2.1% through 9/10.This Baumeister et al. A reading of 1.5% was interpreted as 1.5% above the long-term trend growth rate. The average growth rate of US GDP from 2000-19 was about 2%, so that would imply a growth rate of 3.5% as of 9/10.
Since these are year-over-year growth rates, we may be in a recession in the first half because an observer proposed a few weeks ago (the period is highlighted in a lavender shade), but it (still) seems unlikely, contrary to what observers have suggested, e.g. Steven Kopitz.
