Current Business Cycle Indicators

Meanwhile, back in the real economy, the employment decelerates. Here’s the current outlook, using  some key indicators noted by the NBER’s Business Cycle Dating Committee (BCDC).

 

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment (dark blue), industrial production (red), Bloomberg consensus for industrial production as of 11/6 (light red square), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing and trade sales in Ch.2012$ (black), and monthly GDP in Ch.2012$ (pink), all log normalized to 2020M02=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve, BEA, via FRED, Macroeconomic Advisers (11/2 release), NBER, Bloomberg, and author’s calculations.

With this employment gain (at 637K above the Bloomberg consensus of 600K), NFP remains 6.6% below the NBER peak at 2020M02 (6.8% in log terms).