Global| Aug 21 2019State Coincident Indexes
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's estimates of state coincident activity for July show fairly good growth over the past year, but signs of weakness—and greater dispersion in the distribution of growth-- more recently. For a [...]
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's estimates of state coincident activity for July show fairly good growth over the past year, but signs of weakness—and greater dispersion in the distribution of growth-- more recently. For a third straight month, the preliminary results show that over the prior 12 months, 32 states had increases in their indexes in the 2 to 4 percent range. No large states were on the high side, but Illinois, New York, and Michigan were under the 2 percent mark—and Michigan reports a small decline over that period. As has been the case with other state figures, Western states were generally stronger than those in the East, though Massachusetts, with a gain just a touch under 4 percent, was the most rapidly growing large state.
Over the three months ending in July, 19 states had gains of less than .5 percent, with 4 seeing outright declines, led by a pronounced .57 percent drop in Michigan. New York and Pennsylvania's gains were meager. 16 states, including Texas, California, and Florida, saw increases of 1 percent or higher, led by Montana's 2.49 percent, was the leader.
For a third straight month Montana had the largest one-month increase in the initial results for July. A total of 12 states saw declines, with drops of more than .2 percent in Delaware, Michigan, and Kentucky.
The upshot from this survey—which, too a great extent, reworks labor market information—is that growth is apparently starting to become less uniform across the nation, with a fair number of states starting to look soft, especially in industrial regions. However, with the data from 3 of the 4 largest states (California, Texas, and Florida) still looking strong (the weakest number from this group is July's .18 percent increase in Texas), the implications for national trends is less clear.
Charles Steindel
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Charles Steindel has been editor of Business Economics, the journal of the National Association for Business Economics, since 2016. From 2014 to 2021 he was Resident Scholar at the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. From 2010 to 2014 he was the first Chief Economist of the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, with responsibilities for economic and revenue projections and analysis of state economic policy. He came to the Treasury after a long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he played a major role in forecasting and policy advice and rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President. He has served in leadership positions in a number of professional organizations. In 2011 he received the William F. Butler Award from the New York Association for Business Economics, is a fellow of NABE and of the Money Marketeers of New York University, and has received several awards for articles published in Business Economics. In 2017 he delivered Ramapo College's Sebastian J. Raciti Memorial Lecture. He is a member of the panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters and of the Committee on Research in Income and Wealth. He has published papers in a range of areas, and is the author of Economic Indicators for Professionals: Putting the Statistics into Perspective. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University, his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a National Association for Business Economics Certified Business EconomistTM.