Weekly Economic Index (WEI)
March 11, 2021
Daniel Lewis, New York Fed
Karel Mertens, Dallas Fed
James Stock, Harvard University
The
WEI is an index of 10 weekly indicators of real economic activity,
scaled to have the units of four-quarter percent change of real GDP.
- The WEI is currently -1.57 percent, scaled to four-quarter GDP growth, for the week ended March 6 and -1.55 percent for February 27; for reference, the WEI stood at 1.55 percent for the week ended February 29, 2020.
- The decline in the WEI for the week of March 6 is due to an increase in initial unemployment insurance claims (relative to the same time last year), which more than offset rises in tax withholding, fuel sales, rail traffic, and electricity output (relative to the same time last year). The WEI for the week of February 27 was revised downward due to continuing unemployment insurance claims, which while lower than the prior week, still provided a more negative signal than previously available data.
- As alternative scales, the current WEI implies a 9.41 percent decrease in IP (YoY) and a 300k employee decrease in nonfarm payroll.
- Data dashboard and .release (.pdf)
- Historical data including recent release (.xlsx)