Sedentary business cycle meetings, end of March | Ecobrowser

Following the release of personal income and spending data, we have real consumption (-0.1% vs. 0.0% m/m consensus) and personal income data for February; Also released today are real sales in manufacturing and trade. Below, in a chart of a number of key business cycles, followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, I add Q4 2022 GDP 3 (discussed in the context of GDO and GDP+ in yesterday’s post).

Picture 1: Non-farm employment, NFP (dark blue), Bloomberg consensus of 3/31 (blue +), civil sector employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in 2012, $ (green ), production and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), consumption in Ch.2012$ (light blue) and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log-normalized to 2021M11= 0. Q3 Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA 2022Q4 3rd edition via FRED, S&P Global/IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisors) (issue 03/01/2023) and the author’s calculations.

Weekly economic indicators (Lewis-Mertens-Stock) for data available through March 25 (see discussion Here) means 1.47% year-on-year growth, which means 2.37% qoq for the first quarter. GDPNow now points to Q1 growth of 2.9% QoQ SAAR, while S&P Market Intelligence/previously IHS Markit raised their tracked estimate to 1.8% QoQ SAAR from 0. 8%, and all because of higher than expected consumption.

There were some concerns that labor market measurements were wrong, especially for the business survey series. The recent release of QCEW data removed some of these concerns (see below). this mail). However, for the sake of completeness, consider the concurring Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank Index (which is heavily based on labor market data, including wages and salaries), the ADP Private Unpaid Worker Employment Series (based on a completely different set of data than the BLS survey of institutions) and civilian employment. series adjusted for NFP concept (based on household survey).

Figure 2: Match index (blue), NFP-adjusted civil sector employment (yellow-brown), and ADP nonfarm payrolls series (green), all in journals, 2021M11 = 0. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, ADP through FRED, BLS and author’s calculations.