With the release of the January 2023 Employment Situation release incorporating benchmark revisions we have the following picture of business cycle indicators followed by the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, along with IHS Markit/SP Global monthly GDP (released on Wednesday):

(Click on image to enlarge)

Figure 1: Nonfarm payroll employment, NFP (dark 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) (2/1/2023 release), and author’s calculations.

While one has to be careful (as always, but particularly when new population controls are incorporated) with the household survey employment series (see this post), I think it’s hard to say that the economy has taken a decided downturn in December/January.

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