The Big Four Economic Indicators: Industrial Production
Doug Short | Oct 17, 2014 07:37AM ET
Note from dshort: This commentary has been updated with this morning's release of September Industrial Production.
Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method.
There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs heavily in their cycle identification process. They are:
- Industrial Production
- Real Personal Income (excluding Transfer Payments)
- Nonfarm Employment
- Real Retail Sales
The Latest Indicator Data
According to the Federal Reserve, "Industrial production increased 1.0 percent in September and advanced at an annual rate of 3.2 percent in the third quarter of 2014, roughly its average quarterly increase since the end of 2010." The full report is available here .
Today's month-over-month increase of 1.0% beat the Investing.com forecast of 0.4%.
My personal view is that Industrial Production is probably the least useful of the Big Four economic indicators. It's a hodge-podge of underlying index components and subject to major revisions, which undercuts its value as a near-term indicator of economic health. As a long-term indicator, it needs two key adjustments to have any correlation with Industrial Production reality. First, it should be adjusted for inflation using some sort of deflator relevant to production. Second, it should be population-adjusted.
The chart below is my preferred way to look at Industrial Production over the long haul. I've used the Producer Price Index for All Commodities as the deflator and Census Bureau's mid-month population estimates to adjust for population growth. I've indexed the adjusted series so that 2007=100.
The most recent data point in this adjusted series is an interim high off the post-recession trough (see the inset above). But it remains below the post-recession highs in 2009 and 2010.
Note: I'm indebted to Bob Bronson of Bronson Capital Research for instructing me on the necessity of inflation and population adjustments to decipher of the Federal Reserve's otherwise misleading Industrial Production data.
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The Generic Big Four
The chart and table below illustrate the performance of the generic Big Four with an overlay of a simple average of the four since the end of the Great Recession. The data points show the cumulative percent change from a zero starting point for June 2009. We now have the three indicator updates for the 61th month following the recession. The Big Four Average is (gray line below).
Current Assessment and Outlook
The overall picture of the US economy had been one of slow recovery from the Great Recession with a clearly documented contraction during the winter, as reflected in Q1 GDP. Data for Q2 supported the consensus view that severe winter weather was responsible for the Q1 contraction -- that it was not the beginnings of a business cycle decline. However, the average of these indicators in recent months suggests that, despite the Q2 rebound in GDP, the economy remains near stall speed.
The next update of the Big Four be the month-end Real Personal Income less Transfer Payments.
Background Analysis: The Big Four Indicators and Recessions
The charts above don't show us the individual behavior of the Big Four leading up to the 2007 recession. To achieve that goal, I've plotted the same data using a "percent off high" technique. In other words, I show successive new highs as zero and the cumulative percent declines of months that aren't new highs. The advantage of this approach is that it helps us visualize declines more clearly and to compare the depth of declines for each indicator and across time (e.g., the short 2001 recession versus the Great Recession). Here is my own four-pack showing the indicators with this technique.
Now let's examine the behavior of these indicators across time. The first chart below graphs the period from 2000 to the present, thereby showing us the behavior of the four indicators before and after the two most recent recessions. Rather than having four separate charts, I've created an overlay to help us evaluate the relative behavior of the indicators at the cycle peaks and troughs. (See my note below on recession boundaries).
The chart above is an excellent starting point for evaluating the relevance of the four indicators in the context of two very different recessions. In both cases, the bounce in Industrial Production matches the NBER trough while Employment and Personal Incomes lagged in their respective reversals.
As for the start of these two 21st century recessions, the indicator declines are less uniform in their behavior. We can see, however, that Employment and Personal Income were laggards in the declines.
Now let's look at the 1972-1985 period, which included three recessions -- the savage 16-month Oil Embargo recession of 1973-1975 and the double dip of 1980 and 1981-1982 (6-months and 16-months, respectively).
And finally, for sharp-eyed readers who can don't mind squinting at a lot of data, here's a cluttered chart from 1959 to the present. That is the earliest date for which all four indicators are available. The main lesson of this chart is the diverse patterns and volatility across time for these indicators. For example, retail sales and industrial production are far more volatile than employment and income.
History tells us the brief periods of contraction are not uncommon, as we can see in this big picture since 1959, the same chart as the one above, but showing the average of the four rather than the individual indicators.
The chart clearly illustrates the savagery of the last recession. It was much deeper than the closest contender in this timeframe, the 1973-1975 Oil Embargo recession. While we've yet to set new highs, the trend has collectively been upward, although we have that strange anomaly caused by the late 2012 tax-planning strategy that impacted the Personal Income.
Here is a close-up of the average since 2000.
Appendix: Chart Gallery with Notes
Each of the four major indicators discussed in this article are illustrated below in three different data manipulations:
- A log scale plotting of the data series to ensure that distances on the vertical axis reflect true relative growth. This adjustment is particularly important for data series that have changed significantly over time.
- A year-over-year representation to help, among other things, identify broader trends over the years.
- A percent-off-high manipulation, which is particularly useful for identifying trend behavior and secular volatility.
Industrial Production
The US Industrial Production Index (INDPRO ) is the oldest of the four indicators, stretching back to 1919, although I've dropped the earlier decades and started in 1950.
Real Personal Income Less Transfer Payments
This data series is computed as by taking Personal Income (PCEPI ). I've chained the data to the latest price index value.
The "Tax Planning Strategies" annotation refers to shifting income into the current year to avoid a real or expected tax increase.
here ).
The chart below shows the Transfer Payment portion of Personal Income. I've included recessions to help illustrate the impact of the business cycle on this metric.
Total Nonfarm Employees
There are many ways to plot employment. The one referenced by the Federal Reserve researchers as one of the NBER indicators is Total Nonfarm Employees (PAYEMS ).
Real Retail Sales
This indicator is a splicing of the discontinued retail sales series (CPIAUCSL ). I used a splice point of January 1995 because that date was mentioned in the FRED notes. My experiments with other splice techniques (e.g., 1992, 2001 or using an average of the overlapping years) didn't make a meaningful difference in the behavior of the indicator in proximity to recessions. I've chained the data to the latest CPI value.
Industrial Production chart .
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