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Weekly economic activity through September 17


Activity growth is decelerating compared to the same period last year. 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 a few days ago (September 17):

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 dipped from the previous week, from 2.8% to 1.8%, 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 is a “big data” approach that uses Google Trends and machine learning to track GDP.

If the 1.8% reading persisted for the entire quarter, then the WEI reading for the week ended September 17 was 1.8, which could be interpreted as a 1.8% y/y quarterly increase. The OECD’s weekly tracking reading of 3.8 translates into an average annual growth rate of 3.8% through 9/17.This Baumeister et al. The 1.1% reading was interpreted as beating the long-term trend growth rate of 1.1%. The average growth rate of US GDP from 2000-19 was about 2%, so that would imply a growth rate of 3.1% as of 9/17.

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.



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