US Chicago Fed National Activity Index Dec: -0.15 (Prev 0.37; PrevR 0.44)
December CFNAI falls for the first month since May, 3-mos average remains positive
US Chicago Fed National Activity Index Dec: -0.15 (Prev 0.37; PrevR 0.44)
Chicago Fed National Activity Index (CFNAI) - Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago
The reason I like the CFNAI is that it gives a good distillation of a lot of inputs (85 total) from several different areas across the US economy (this is a national indicator) which we'll go through below.
Following two strong months, the December reading fell into negative territory for the first time in nine months as the production and personal consumption indicators fell, with the overall index declining -0.15. The three month moving average remained positive though at +0.33. 38 of 85 individual components were positive (down from 53 last month and 61 in October) with 31 improving from September (down from 32 and 58) while 47 deteriorated (up from 32 and 26). Half the four categories made positive contributions, but all four deteriorated from November which had seen all four deteriorate from October. So, consistent with the other December reports (which this tracks) this just confirms the economic deterioration we saw at the end of the year.
As a reminder, the CNFAI doesn't have any "new" data - it is just a compilation of other reports that have been released (or estimates for reports that hasn't been released yet). But since all of the data is not available at the time of the initial report, and as this is subject to being revised as the underlying reports are revised, I like to look back at revisions, which were mixed (with November and September being revised up a total of 13 points while October, August, and July were revised down by 8 points). For this report data was through reports as of Jan 20th. As of that date, data on 50 of the 85 indicators had been published.
From the report (bold is mine):
Production-related indicators contributed –0.13 to the CFNAI in December, down from +0.25 in November. Manufacturing production decreased 0.3 percent in December after increasing 0.6 percent in November, and manufacturing capacity utilization moved down by 0.2 percentage points in December after increasing by 0.4 percentage points in the previous month. The contribution of the sales, orders, and inventories category to the CFNAI ticked down to +0.03 in December from +0.05 in November. Employment-related indicators contributed +0.13 to the CFNAI in December, down slightly from +0.16 in November. Nonfarm payrolls moved up by 199,000 in December after increasing by 249,000 in November, but the unemployment rate decreased to 3.9 percent in December from 4.2 percent in the previous month. The contribution of the personal consumption and housing category to the CFNAI decreased to –0.19 in December from –0.02 in November.
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