Recession Stats Thru Q4 2014

These are the most recent St Louis FED Recession Comps. They tell a powerful tale that we are still mired in a long term mess. Recall that employment looks good only because we lowered the denominator, namely the workforce. That means we have permanently removed 6 million people from doing anything productive. Why? Lots of answers but like terrorism if we fail to identify it and call it what it is then it will never go away. But the current Administration eschews such acts.

First Production is not bad. It follows the average growth from a Recession and looking at this things may seem fine.

Now the above is Income growth. It is horrible, there is NONE. We have given a new bottom to Income.

Employment is rock bottom as well, and this only looks slightly better because of the elimination of people from the work force.

Retail Sales is on par, most likely driven by Government support via Income Transfers.

The GDP growth is also rock bottom. We may have some growth but relative to all other Recessions we are below them for the past 10 Quarters!

Now for the GDP elements we show them below in toto.

Personal Consumption is low. Government Consumption is also low. They are the two laggards. The others seem fine. Overall we still appear to have a concerned private sector and Washington seems to neglect it.

Recession Statistics Q2 2012

We have examined and comment here on the St Louis Fed's Recession Statistics. We have been tracking them quarterly since the beginning of the collapse and frankly they are appearing to get worse. Given what we see and other data we have reported upon there is a strong possibility of a second recession this Fall.

Let us examine the data.

Industrial Production appears on average, weak but on par. This frankly is the best metric.

Income is below the lowest. Income is just not recovering and in fact it will be the driver for the next dip. Despite Production, if there are no customers then we will see that drop also.

Employment is very weak. Not the worst yet but getting there. It shows no sign of any improvement and this will drag on well into 2014.

Retail Sales seems to be keeping up but I suspect that a good deal of that is credit increase as well as Government Supports; Unemployment, FICA elimination and Food Stamps. These Government Programs are non job creating and just add drag to the economy.

The GDP stats show we are now below the lowest. This is truly a concern. The weak growth rate will not see any improvement under the current administration.

Personal Consumption, an element of the GDP, is well below the lowest. People are just not buying, not enough income and employment.

However Private Investment is above average. Money is around but the investments do not result in employment, just improvements in productivity.

Government Consumption is the lowest yet, and much of this is State and Local.

Exports are high relative...

Imports are average.

The above presents a dire forecast for 2013-2014, especially if we remain on course.

Recession Statistics: Q1 2012

As before we use the St Louis FED data showing the min, max and average metrics for the GDP and its components. The GDP above, the total metric, lags the average recovery but does exceed the worst. Yet there is a major concern that even the worse is nearing where we are now. Growth is consistently slow. There now is a clear concern that the recovery may be so weak as to fall below the min curve.

Consumer consumption is a problem since it now defines the bottom at this point as shown above. This has been the aggregate demand argument but it is a combination of fear and reduced credit as well as unemployment, real not the DoL type. The consumption number is a major concern since at one level fewer taxpayers means less revenue and more unemployed means higher benefits and thus expenditures.

Government consumption is now lowest. I find this amazing given the deficit and its continued explosion. This is shown below. The real issue is what are  we truly measuring here. It must also be made clear that min, max and avg are not necessarily the same recession recovery so the data may be highly mixed.

The following are the stats on Imports and Exports. First Exports have exceeded the average recovery which is good.

Imports have met average. This is most likely due to reduced consumer demands. However imports reduce GDP and since imports have been several multiples of exports even a flat number may still create a negative effect.

Bottom line, things seem to be getting worse not better.