The Survey of Professional Forecasters February survey was released on Friday. The median outlook has improved considerably since early January.
Sentiment and Misery (and Maybe Partisanship)
The University of Michigan’s February consumer sentiment index (preliminary) is out today. Here’s the picture (series inverted so down is improvement) and the “misery index”, the sum of unemployment and y/y CPI inflation.
Weekly Macro Indicators thru 2/4/2023 and Monthly GDP
Weekly indicators from Lewis-Mertens-Stock (NY Fed) Weekly Economic Indicators, and Baumeister, Leiva-Leon and Sims WECI and Woloszko (OECD) Weekly Tracker through 2/4/2023, released today, compared against monthly GDP.
Debt Held by the Public as Share of GDP
From Treasury, and CBO.
Cumulative NFP Job Creation in First Four Years, by President
Just sayin’
Dispersion in Q1 Nowcasts
Here are several nowcasts of 2023Q1 GDP, placed against the January WSJ mean forecast and IMF WEO projection of 31 January.
Revisiting Exchange Market Pressure
Linda Goldberg and Signe Krogstrup have a revised version of a paper entitled “International Capital Flow Pressures and Global Factors”. They write:
Remembering (or Not) the Recession of 2022H1
Compiling a bunch of labor market data, we have the following picture of the private nonfarm labor sector, which seems to run counter to the argument last made a month ago that a recession occurred in 2022H1.
Carl Walsh Blogging “Thoughts on Fed Policy”
Carl Walsh, author of Monetary Theory and Policy, joins the econ-blogging community at his blog. His most recent post is on the four surges in inflation.
The Employment Release and Business Cycle Indicators
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):