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Thursday, November 6, 2008

An Impressive Recession Indicator

Add this metric to your list of recession indicators: the year-on-year change in civilian unemployed - 15 weeks and over. Whenever this measure exceeds 0% for a sustained period there has been a recession. This pattern can be seen in the figure below, where NBER-dated recessions are in gray bars (click on figure to enlarge):


The consistency of this pattern is remarkable. Thanks to Robin G. Brown, one of my students, for pointing this relationship out to me.

4 comments:

  1. Norris of the NYT has been on the indicator for some time.

    The election is over. NBER can now appear to be apolitical. The recession commenced December 2007, IMO.

    Frankels, a NBER business cycle dating member, is partial to the hours worked meme as is Kasriel.

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  2. Update: NBER is still going to sit on its hands, huh.

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  3. Is it necessary to consult indicators now? Does a credible argument (outside NBER) remain that we are not in a recession?

    Soon we may need to start digging up the depression indicators.

    ReplyDelete