Employment numbers for August were released yesterday. Nonfarm payroll employment fell, and is undershooting the July 2021 Economic Forecast:
Business Cycle Indicators as of Mid-September
Industrial production finally rises above levels in 2020M02 (the latest NBER peak). We now have the following picture of the macroeconomy (for some key indicators followed by the NBER’s BCDC).
More on the China Slowdown
From BBVA (Jinyue Dong & Le Xia) today, discussing August data: “China | Worse-than-expected growth deceleration exposed the vulnerability of its anti-virus strategy”:
Wisconsin Monthly Economic Update
From the Wisconsin Department of Revenue – September issue. The regular publication of Economic Forecast reports (latest here) and the innovation of monthly updates contrasts strongly with the near economic news blackout in the second Scott Walker administration (discussed here). DoR has also added a lot more data visualizations, here.
CPI Undershoot Illustrated
Typical headline – “U.S. Consumer Price Growth Cools, Smallest Gain in Seven Months“, and “Treasuries Rally After CPI Seen Pushing Off Taper: Markets Wrap” or “Consumer prices climbed more slowly in August, welcome news for the Fed“. Here’re the graphical depictions of the undershoot, first in levels (updating graph from yesterday’s post).
Slowdown in China
Goldman Sachs Current Activity Indicator (CAI) dips into negative territory in August. Since the CAI is scaled to GDP annualized growth, this implies negative GDP growth in that month.
Two Pictures – Money to Income and the Price Level
[For my Econ 435 students] Consider the following graphs. Figure 1 is M1 and M2 to real GDP (0.80 means 80%) for the United States. Figure 2 is M1 to real GDP on left scale, and CPI-all urban on the right scale (taking on a value of 100 in the period 1982-84).
August CPI – Nowcasts
The CPI release for August numbers is tomorrow. As of today, here are the Cleveland Fed nowcasts for CPI and Core CPI:
Inflation – A Comprehensive Global Database, 1970-2021
From Ha, Kose, and Ohnsorge, One-Stop Source: A Global Database of Inflation:
FT-IGM Macro Survey, on GDP, Inflation, Monetary Policy
From FT Friday, “Economists predict US interest rate rise in 2022” (Colby Smith/Christine Zhang), discussion of results of the second FT-Chicago Booth IGM survey of macroeconomists: