Thursday, October 1, 2020

 

Weekly Economic Index (WEI)

October 1, 2020

 

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 -4.62 percent, scaled to four-quarter GDP growth, for the week ended September 26 and -4.95 percent for September 19; for reference, the WEI stood at 1.55 percent for the week ended February 29.
  • The increase in the WEI for the week of September 26 was due to a decline in initial unemployment insurance claims, which more than offset decreases in electricity output, fuel sales, rail traffic, and tax withholding. The WEI for the week of September 19 was revised downward due to the continuing unemployment insurance claims release, 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 18.64 percent decrease in IP (YoY) and a 674k employee decrease in nonfarm payroll.
  • Data dashboard and .release (.pdf)
  • Historical data including recent release (.xlsx)
 

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