Global| Nov 27 2018State Coincident Indexes
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's estimates of state coincident activity in October is in line with other state-level indicators showing a convergence of growth across the nation. The 12-month growth in the indexes lay between [...]
The Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank's estimates of state coincident activity in October is in line with other state-level indicators showing a convergence of growth across the nation. The 12-month growth in the indexes lay between 2.5% and 4.5% for 31 states; the outliers (mainly on the low side) did not include any remarkably large states. A number of smaller energy-producing intensive states, such as Kentucky, West Virginia, North Dakota, and Louisiana were in the low group. No state reports a loss. Hawaii, which has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, registered the smallest gain in activity. New Mexico appears to be the fastest-growing state over the last year, with a remarkable 6.4% increase in its activity index.
The more recent figures are, as is typical for a data set such as this, more scattered. Alaska and Oklahoma report gains above 1.5%, while 6 states have seen declines. Still, the geographic pattern of large gains and losses was diffuse: it's not longer clearly the case that the West is growing noticeably more rapidly than other regions. Weakness in Hawaii—one of the states down the last three months--and recent gains in Alaska (the state with the highest unemployment rate, but also the highest rate of growth in activity recently) exemplify the ongoing convergence. The pattern of monthly changes from September to October was comparable to that for the last three months.
One complication is that these indexes are benchmarked to the trend in a state's real GDP growth. The series have not, it appears, been updated to reflect the recent revision in the state GDP dataset. Such an adjustment may modify the general tenor of the results, and surely will change all the numbers.
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.