Weekly Economic Index (WEI)

December 10 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 -2.39 percent, scaled to four-quarter GDP growth, for the week ended December 5 and -2.08 percent for November 28; for reference, the WEI stood at 1.55 percent for the week ended February 29.
• The decline in the WEI for the week of December 5 is due to a decrease in fuel sales, which more than offset a decrease in initial unemployment insurance claims (relative to the same time last year) and rises in tax withholding, electricity output, and rail traffic. The WEI for the week of November 28 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 11.89 percent decrease in IP (YoY) and a 401k employee decrease in nonfarm payroll.
• Data dashboard and .release (.pdf)
• Historical data including recent release (.xlsx)