The Employment Situation release for January 2024 incorporated annual benchmark revisions to establishment survey series, and reported population controls for the household survey series. NFP at +353 vs. +187 thousands Bloomberg consensus. (Last year at this time, NFP again surprised, at +517 thousand exceeding the Bloomberg consensus of +115 thousand.)
Author Archives: Menzie Chinn
Business Cycle Indicators on the Eve of the January Employment Situation Release
SPGMI monthly GDP m/m growth for December shoots up at an annualized 12.2%, after 9.8% in November.
Probability of Recession: Term Spread vs. Term Spread, DSR, Foreign Term Spread
In this post from Monday, I recounted the US results from Chinn-Ferrara (2024), using debt-service ratio data up to end-2022. The BIS has now released debt-service ratio data up to Q2. I use a regression of DSR growth rate on changes in AAA and 3 month Treasury yields, and 2 lags of DSR growth to forecast 2023Q3 DSR. I then obtain the following estimate of recession probability through 2024M09.
“The Ukrainian War Economy”
Yuriy Gorodnichenko speaks at the Markus Academy (hosted at Princeton University), Friday, February 2, 12:30 PM ET. Yuriy Gorodnichenko is the inaugural Quantedge Presidential Chair in Economics at UC Berkeley.
Evaluating 25 Years of ECB (Policy)
On 16 January 2024, the second ECB@25 Symposium was hosted by Professor Mary Pieterse-Bloem (Erasmus School of Economics Professor of Financial Markets) at our Pavilion.
Sentiment, Confidence, News: January 2024
The Conference Board’s confidence index is up, following U.Michigan’s survey of sentiment.
Is Wisconsin in Recession?
WisGOP thinks so.
“The Predictive Power of the Term Spread and Financial Variables for Economic Activity across Countries”: The US
From a new paper, NBER WP No. 32084, by myself and Laurent Ferrara, out today.
Guest Contribution: “Helping Ukraine is a National Security No-brainer”
Today, we present a guest post written by Jeffrey Frankel, Harpel Professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and formerly a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. A shorter version appeared at Project Syndicate on January 25th..
Nowcasts and Alternative Output Measures
GDPNow and NY Fed nowcasts as of today: