State Coincident Indexes for February 2010

In the past month, the indexes increased in 21 states, decreased in 22, and remained unchanged in seven for a one-month diffusion index of -2. Over the past three months, the indexes increased in 18 states, decreased in 25, and remained unchanged in seven for a three-month diffusion index of -14.

state coincident map 3/10

 

Here is the current release. The 3 month average national coincident index for the U.S. is +0.1% and for the year -2.2%. Reading the above map, negative values mean things have gotten worse over the last 3 months, positive means improvement.

What the hell is a State Coincident Index you ask? It is a little howz the State doin' meter of 4 values: jobs, hours worked, official unemployment rate and paychecks normalized by inflation. These values (you seeing this income, jobs!) are correlated to State GDP. Coincident means what you think it means, current time, or what's happening right now. Or let the Fed say it in Econobabble:

The coincident indexes combine four state-level indicators to summarize current economic conditions in a single statistic. The four state-level variables in each coincident index are nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and wage and salary disbursements deflated by the consumer price index (U.S. city average). The trend for each state’s index is set to the trend of its gross domestic product (GDP), so long-term growth in the state’s index matches long-term growth in its GDP.

So, while the recession has been declared over in July 2009, look at all of the shades of red all over the map, I don't think those states are gonna claim it's all over.

Looking over the excel data (on the website, while we see Michigan is in the green, they have been suffering from a major cliff diving economic contraction, so take that green color with a grain of salt.

Blytic has graphs of coincident data from every state in this link.

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