EJ Antoni and Peter St. Some argue that we have been misled by the wrong deflators. Contradictions, which show the non-reproducibility of their results, and non-reducing sensitive indicators, which are downloaded here, with new data.
Figure 9 from Chinn (2024): Nonfarm payroll (NFP) employment (blue), preliminary benchmark NFP (tan), preliminary benchmark (red), aggregate hours in the private sector (blue), independent NFP employment at ADP (light green) , employment (dark red), employment of residents using population controls implied by CBO estimates of immigration (lilac), industrial production (chartreuse), coincident index (purple), in logs 2021M11=0. Source: BLS, Federal Reserve Board via FRED, Philadelphia Fed, and author’s calculations.
In this new version of the paper, I write that these sensitive indicators are all above the levels of the end of 2021, indicating that we were not in a recession – defined as the BCDC of the NBER – as of 2022.
Even industrial production – which fell below 0.9% from September 2022 – has increased in line with the end of 2019. Note that the value added of industrial production comprises about 17% of GDP, and 8.1% of non-farm employment as of September 2024. So, while this indicator is not rising rapidly, it is not a particularly broad indicator of economic activity.
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