Business Cycle Indicators as of Mid-January

Industrial and manufacturing production (+0.9% m/m vs. +0.3% consensus; +0.6% m/m vs. +0.2% consensus), retail sales (control) surprise on the upside. First, indicators followed by the NBER BCDC:

Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll (NFP) employment from CES (blue), implied NFP from preliminary benchmark (bold blue), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold light green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDP (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: BLS via FRED, Federal Reserve, BEA 2024Q3 3rd release, S&P Global Market Insights (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (12/2/2024 release), and author’s calculations.

Second, alternative indicators, which paint a similar story of continued growth, with adjusted for CBO estimated immigration employment higher. On the other side, vehicle miles traveled was down in October and November.

Figure 2: Implied nonfarm Payroll early benchmark (NFP) (bold blue), civilian employment adjusted using CBO immigration estimates (orange), manufacturing production (red), personal income excluding current transfers in Ch.2017$ (bold green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2017$ (black), consumption in Ch.2017$ (light blue), and monthly GDP in Ch.2017$ (pink), GDO (blue bars), all log normalized to 2021M11=0. Source: Philadelphia Fed [1], Philadelphia Fed [2], Federal Reserve via FRED, BEA 2024Q3 third release, , and author’s calculations.