Weekly Economic Index (WEI)

December 24 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 -2.21 percent, scaled to four-quarter GDP growth, for the week ended December 19 and -2.72 percent for December 12; for reference, the WEI stood at 1.55 percent for the week ended February 29.
• The increase in the WEI for the week of December 19 is due to a decrease in initial unemployment insurance claims and rises in fuel sales and electricity output, which more than offset declines in tax withholding and rail traffic. The WEI for the week of December 12 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 an 11.34 percent decrease in IP (YoY) and a 379k employee decrease in nonfarm payroll.
• Data dashboard and .release (.pdf)
• Historical data including recent release (.xlsx)