As 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 Weekly Economic Conditions Index for US plus 2% trend (green) Source: NY Fed through FRED, OECD, WECI, and authors estimations.
The WEI fell somewhat from the previous week, to 2.2% from 2.3%, while the Weekly Tracker rose. Its reasonable to state there some divergence, which is not unexpected, given the big differences in methods. The WEI depends on connections in ten series offered at the weekly frequency (e.g., unemployment claims, fuel sales, retail sales). The Weekly Tracker– at 1.5%– is a “big information” technique that utilizes Google Trends and artificial intelligence to track GDP.
The WEI reading for the week ending 10/8 of 2.72% is interpretable as a y/y quarter growth of 2.2% if the 2.2% reading were to continue for a whole quarter. The OECD Weekly Tracker reading of 1.5% is interpretable as a y/y development rate of 1.5% for year ending 9/24 (this series was revised downward visibly from last release).
Considering that these are year-on-year development rates, its possible we were in an economic downturn in H1 as one observer suggested a month back, but it (still) appears unlikely.
This entry was published on October 14, 2022 by Menzie Chinn.
