The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s state coincident indexes in October were quite mixed, with the balance tilting toward weakness. A full 32 states show declines from September, with West Virginia’s reading down by 1 percent and Montana’s and Mississippi’s indexes falling more than .5 percent. Of the 18 states with increases, the largest was Nevada’s fairly moderate .33 percent. Over the 3 months ending in October, 16 states had declines, with West Virginia off 2.7 percent, and Montana and Mississippi dropping more than 1 percent. South Carolina and Maryland both increased roughly 1.3 percent over this period, which is not an especially large gain for states at the top Over the last 12 months Maryland had an impressive 7.4 percent increase, and Massachusetts and Vermont were up more than 6 percent. 3 states had increases of less than 1 percent, with New Jersey again at the bottom with a .2 percent reading.
The independently estimated national figures of growth over the last 3 months (.5 percent) and 12 months (3.0 percent) both look to be roughly in line with what the state figures suggest.