The Big Four Economic Indicators: Update

Note from dshort: This commentary has been revised to include the latest Industrial Production data released today. I've not yet included an update for the January Real Retail Sales data, released earlier this week, because the January CPI used to calculate the number won't be available until next Thursday.


Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method.

There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs heavily in their cycle identification process. They are:

  • Industrial Production
  • Real Personal Income (excluding transfer payments)
  • Employment
  • Real Retail Sales

The weight of these four in the decision process is sufficient rationale for the St. Louis FRED repository to feature a chart four-pack of these indicators along with the statement that "the charts plot four main economic indicators tracked by the NBER dating committee."

Here are the four as identified in the Federal Reserve Economic Data repository. See the data specifics in the linked PDF file with details on the calculation of two of the indicators.

The FRED charts are excellent. They show us the behavior of the big four indicators currently (the green line) as compared to their best, worst and average behavior across all the recessions in history for the four indicators (which have start dates). Their snapshots extend from 12 months before the June 2009 recession trough to the present.

The Latest Indicator Data: January Nonfarm Employment

I've now updated this commentary to include the January data for Industrial Production, the purple line in the chart below.

Industrial production edged down 0.1 percent in January after having risen 0.4 percent in December. In January, manufacturing output decreased 0.4 percent following upwardly revised gains of 1.1 percent in December and 1.7 percent in November. For the fourth quarter as a whole, manufacturing production is now estimated to have advanced 1.9 percent at an annual rate; previously, the increase was reported to have been 0.2 percent. In January, the output of utilities rose 3.5 percent, as demand for heating was boosted by temperatures that fell closer to their seasonal norms; the production at mines declined 1.0 percent. At 98.6 percent of its 2007 average, total industrial production in January was 2.1 percent above its level of a year earlier. The capacity utilization rate for total industry decreased in January to 79.1 percent, a rate that is 1.1 percentage points below its long-run (1972--2012) average. [source]


Current Assessment and Outlook

At this point, the average of the Big Four (the gray line in the chart) illustrates that economic expansion since the last recession, which had been hovering near a flat line for several months, has shown strong improvement in the past two months. However, the tax-planning skew for Personal Incomes that I discussed here definitely overstates the apparent improvement. That sharp upward slope in the red line in the chart above will definitely oscillate downward in the January Personal Income release on March 1st.

As for today's Industrial Production, although the key number edged down 0.1 percent in January, the previous three months were revised upward -- December up 0.6 and November up 0.5, which definitely improves the Industrial Production slope for the latter part of 2012.

And of course all recent data are subject to further revision, so we must view these numbers accordingly.

At this point the major negative economic headwinds are battle over the debt ceiling, sequestration and the real impact of the expiration of the 2% FICA tax holiday on incomes, spending and ultimately production. And on top of these will be the backside of the end-of-year tax strategy used by many businesses and individuals to take what would normally have been 2013 earnings in the final months of 2012.

Background Analysis: The Big Four Indicators and Recessions

The charts above don't show us the individual behavior of the Big Four leading up to the 2007 recession. To achieve that goal, I've plotted the same data using a "percent off high" technique. In other words, I show successive new highs as zero and the cumulative percent declines of months that aren't new highs. The advantage of this approach is that it helps us visualize declines more clearly and to compare the depth of declines for each indicator and across time (e.g., the short 2001 recession versus the Great Recession). Here is my own four-pack showing the indicators with this technique.

Now let's examine the behavior of these indicators across time. The first chart below graphs the period from 2000 to the present, thereby showing us the behavior of the four indicators before and after the two most recent recessions. Rather than having four separate charts, I've created an overlay to help us evaluate the relative behavior of the indicators at the cycle peaks and troughs. (See my note below on recession boundaries).

The chart above is an excellent starting point for evaluating the relevance of the four indicators in the context of two very different recessions. In both cases, the bounce in Industrial Production matches the NBER trough while Employment and Personal Incomes lagged in their respective reversals.

As for the start of these two 21st century recessions, the indicator declines are less uniform in their behavior. We can see, however, that Employment and Personal Income were laggards in the declines.

Now let's look at the 1972-1985 period, which included three recessions -- the savage 16-month Oil Embargo recession of 1973-1975 and the double dip of 1980 and 1981-1982 (6-months and 16-months, respectively).

And finally, for sharp-eyed readers who can don't mind squinting at a lot of data, here's a cluttered chart from 1959 to the present. That is the earliest date for which all four indicators are available. The main lesson of this chart is the diverse patterns and volatility across time for these indicators. For example, retail sales and industrial production are far more volatile than employment and income.

History tells us the brief periods of contraction are not uncommon, as we can see in this big picture since 1959, the same chart as the one above, but showing the average of the four rather than the individual indicators.

The chart clearly illustrates the savagery of the last recession. It was much deeper than the closest contender in this timeframe, the 1973-1975 Oil Embargo recession. While we've yet to set new highs, the trend has collectively been upward. But a closer look at the average shows a clear slowing of the trend in 2012.

Source: Advisor Perspectives

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dshort [at] advisorperspectives [dot] com ()