Writing this in March 2020 in the midst of a shutdown of many US cities, it is clear that the US economy (and indeed the Global economy) will take a major hit and most likely we will fall into a recession.
The coming months and year (or more) will see a rocky, uneven recovery that will not be even across all industry sectors. Over the years, we have been tracking numerous economic data points reported out by the US Government on a monthly basis. From this data, we built an index based on seven different economic metrics and then track this index each month.
The seven economic indicators are:
- Labor force & unemployment rate
- Consumer Credit
- Existing home sales
- Retail sales
- Industrial production
- Producer Price Index
- Private construction spending
The chart below shows the overall index for the past 6 years going back to January 2014 going thru January data 2020. There are two more data points left to publish for February 2020 and they will be posted within the next two weeks. At that point, we will have the last picture of the economy as it was prior to the effect of the coronavirus.
We will keep posting in the coming months as we not only track the effect of the economic slowdown but also the recovery.
