With September employment reported today (336K vs. 170K Bloomberg consensus), we have the following picture of the economy.

Figure 1: Nonfarm Payroll employment incorporating preliminary benchmark (dark blue), implied September NFP incorporating Bloomberg 10/2 consensus (blue +), civilian employment (orange), industrial production (red), personal income excluding transfers in Ch.2017$ (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, BLS preliminary benchmark, Federal Reserve, BEA 2023Q2 second release via FRED, S&P Global/IHS Markit (nee Macroeconomic Advisers, IHS Markit) (10/2/2023 release), Atlanta Fed (10/5/2023 release), and author’s calculations.

Figure 1 shows nonfarm payroll employment incorporating the preliminary benchmark which revised downward March 2023 employment by 306,000. Figure 2 shows the official series (tan) compared to alternative measures of nonfarm payroll employment.

Figure 2: Nonfarm payroll employment (tan), NFP employment incorporating preliminary benchmark calculated by author (bold blue), Philadelphia Fed early benchmark (green), household employment adjusted to conform to NFP concept (light blue), and QCEW covered employment adjusted by Census X-13 by author (red), all in thousands, seasonally adjusted. Source: BLS via FRED, Philadelphia Fed, BLS, BLS-QCEW, and author’s calculations.

The household series adjusted to NFP concept looks a little softer than the CES series. However, this is a reflection in part of the softer reading from the CPS survey (see Figure 1, orange line).

Still no recession apparent as of 2023M09, although these data are going to be revised, so no assurances.

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