With the release of personal consumption and income for October, we have the following picture of key series followed by the NBER BCDC (along with monthly GDP from IHS Markit, formerly from Macroeconomic Advisers).

(Click on image to enlarge)

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment, NFP (dark blue), Bloomberg consensus as of 12/1 (blue +), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2012$ (green), manufacturing 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, via FRED, IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers) (12/1/2022 release), and author’s calculations.

Personal income excluding current transfers and consumption continued to rise. While Q3 GDP was revised up by 0.3 ppts SAAR,  IHS Markit Monthly GDP rose in October as well:

Monthly GDP rose 0.3% in October following a 0.5% decline in September. The latter was revised lower by 0.4 percentage point. The increase in monthly GDP in October was more than accounted for by a solid gain in real personal consumption expenditures. Elsewhere, gains in October were recorded for nonresidential fixed investment, nonfarm inventory investment, and others, while declines were recorded for residential investment and net exports.

GDPNow as of today is for 2.8% q/q SAAR in Q4. Given the likely revisions in GDP and the evolution of GDO, it seems unlikely (still) to me that a recession occurred in 2022H1. A recession in 2023 however, seems likely given yield curve inversions and other predictors.

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