Category: Ch18: GDP

The Return of the FedEx Indicator?

Image from the Wall Street Journal.

On September 16, 2022 an article in the Wall Street Journal had the headline: “Economic Worries, Weak FedEx Results Push Stocks Lower.” Another article in the Wall Street Journal noted that: “The company’s downbeat forecasts, announced Thursday, intensified investors’ macroeconomic worries.”

Why would the news that FedEx had lower revenues than expected during the preceding weeks cause a decline in stock market indexes like the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500? As the article explained: “Delivery companies [such as FedEx and its rival UPS) are the proverbial canary in the coal mine for the economy.” In other words, investors were using FedEx’s decline in revenue as a leading indicator of the business cycle.  A leading indicator is an economic data series—in this case FedEx’s revenue—that starts to decline before real GDP and employment in the months before a recession and starts to increase before real GDP and employment in the months before a recession reaches a trough and turns into an expansion. 

So, investors were afraid that FedEx’s falling revenue was a signal that the U.S. economy would soon enter a recession. And, in fact, FedEx CEO Raj Subramaniam was quoted as believing that the global economy would fall into a recession. As firms’ profits decline during a recession so, typically, do the prices of the firms’ stock. (As we discuss in Macroeconomics, Chapter 6, Section 6.2 and in Economics, Chapter 8, Section 8.2, stock prices reflect investors’ expectations of the future profitability of the firms issuing the stock.)

Monitoring fluctuations in FedEx’s revenue for indications of the future course of the economy is nothing new. When Alan Greenspan was chair of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to 2006, he spoke regularly with Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx and at the time CEO of the firm. Greenspan believed that changes in the number of packages FedEx shipped gave a good indication of the overall state of the economy. FedEx plays such a large role in moving packages around the country that most economists agree that there is a close relationship between fluctuations in FedEx’s business and fluctuations in GDP. Some Wall Street analysts refer to this relationship as the “FedEx Indicator” of how the economy is doing.

In September 2022, the FedEx indicator was blinking red. But the U.S. economy is complex and fluctuations in any indicator can sometimes provide an inaccurate forecast of when a recession will begin or end. And, in fact, some investment analysts believed that problems at FedEx may have been due as much to mistakes the firms’ managers had made as to general problems in the economy. As one analyst put it: “We believe a meaningful portion of FedEx’s missteps here are company-specific.” 

At this point, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and the other members of the Federal Open Market Committee are still hoping that they can bring the economy in for a soft landing—bringing inflation down closer to the Fed’s 2 percent target, without bringing on a recession—despite some signals, like those being given by the FedEx indicator, that the probability of the United States entering a recession was increasing. 

Sources: Will Feuer, “FedEx Stock Tumbles More Than 20% After Warning on Economic Trends,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2022; Alex Frangos and Hannah Miao, “ FedExt Stock Hit by Profit Warning; Rivals Also Drop Amid Recession Fears,” Wall Street Journal, September 16, 2022; Richard Clough, “FedEx has Biggest Drop in Over 40 Years After Pulling Forecast,” bloomberg.com, September 16, 2022; and David Gaffen, “The FedEx Indicator,” Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2007.

Is the U.S. Economy in a Recession? Real GDP versus Real GDI

Photo from the Wall Street Journal.

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) publishes data on gross domestic product (GDP) each quarter. Economists and media reports typically focus on changes in real GDP as the best measure of the overall state of the U.S. economy. But, as we discuss in Macroeconomics, Chapter 8, Section 8.4 (Economics, Chapter 18, Section 18.4), the BEA also publishes quarterly data on gross domestic income (GDI). As we discuss in Chapter 8, Section 8.1 when discussing the circular-flow diagram, the value of every final good and services produced in the economy (GDP) should equal the value of all the income in the economy resulting from that production (GDI). The BEA has designed the two measures to be identical by including in GDI some non-income items, such as sales taxes and depreciation. But as we discuss in the Apply the Concept, “Should We Pay More Attention to Gross Domestic Income?” GDP and GDI are compiled by the BEA from different data sources and can sometimes significantly diverge. 

A large divergence between the two measures occurred in the first half of 2022. During this period real GDP declined—as shown by the blue line in the following figure—after which some stories in the media indicated that the U.S. economy was in a recession.  But real GDI—as shown by the red line in the figure—increased during the same two quarters. So, was the U.S. economy still in the expansion that began in the third quarter of 2020, rather than in a recession?  Or, as an article in the Wall Street Journal put it: “A Different Take on the U.S. Economy: Maybe It Isn’t Really Shrinking.”

In fact, most economists do not follow the popular definition of a recession as being two consecutive quarters of declining real GDP. Instead, as we discuss in Chapter 10, Section 10.3, economists typically follow the definition of a recession used by the National Bureau of Economic Research: “A recession is a significant decline in activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade.” 

During the first half of 2022, most measures of economic activity were expanding, rather than contracting. For example, the first of the following figures shows payroll employment increasing in each month in the first half of 2022. The second figure shows industrial production also increasing during most months in the first half of 2022, apart from a very slight decline from April to May after which it continued to increase. 

Taken together, these data indicate that the U.S. economy was likely not in a recession during the first half of 2022. The BEA revises the data on real GDP and real GDI over time as various government agencies gather more information on the different production and income measures included in the series. Jeremy Nalewaik of the Federal Reserve Board of Governors has analyzed the BEA’s adjustments to its initial estimates of real GDP and real GDI. He has found that when there are significant differences between the two series, the BEA revisions usually result in the GDP values being revised to be closer to the GDI values. Put another way, the initial GDI estimates may be more accurate than the initial GDP estimates.

If that generalization holds true in 2022, then the BEA may eventually revise its estimates of GDP upward, which would show that the U.S. economy was not in a recession in the first of half of 2022 because economic activity was increasing rather than decreasing. 

Sources: Jon Hilsenrath, “A Different Take on the U.S. Economy: Maybe It Isn’t Really Shrinking,” Wall Street Journal, August 28, 2022; Reade Pickert, “Key US Growth Measures Diverge, Complicating Recession Debate,” bloomberg.com, August 25, 2022; Jeremy L. Nalewaik, “The Income- and Expenditure-Side Estimates of U.S. Output Growth,” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Spring 2010, pp. 71-127; and Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Be Careful When Interpreting Macroeconomic Data at the Beginning of a Recession

On Friday, July 8, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released its monthly “Employment Situation” report for June 2022. The BLS estimated that nonfarm employment had increased by 372,000 during the month. That number was well above what economic forecasters had expected and seemed inconsistent with other macroeconomic data that showed the U.S. economy slowing. (Note that the increase in employment is from the establishment survey, sometimes called the payroll survey, which we discuss in Macroeconomics, Chapter 9, Section 9.1 and Economics, Chapter 19, Section 19.1.)

Data indicating that the economy was slowing during the first half of 2022 include the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s (BEA) estimate that real GDP had declined by 1.6 percent in the first quarter of 2022. The BEA’s advance estimate—the agency’s first estimate for the quarter—for the change in real GDP during the second quarter of 2022 won’t be released until July 28, but there are indications that real GDP will have declined again during the second quarter.  For instance, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta compiles a forecast of real GDP called GDPNow. The GDPNow forecast uses data that are released monthly on 13 components of GDP. This method allows economists at the Atlanta Fed to issue forecasts of real GDP well in advance of the BEA’s estimates. On July 8, the GDPNow forecast was that real GDP in the second quarter of 2022 would decline by 1.2 percent.

Two consecutive quarters of declining real GDP seems inconsistent with employment strongly growing. At a basic level, if firms are producing fewer goods and services—which is what causes a decline in real GDP—we would expect the firms to be reducing, rather than increasing, the number of people they employ. How can we reconcile the seeming contradiction between rising employment and falling output? One possibility is that either the real GDP data or the employment data—or, possibly, both—are inaccurate. Both GDP data and employment data from the establishment survey are subject to potentially substantial future revisions. (Note that because they are constructed from a survey of households, the employment data in the household survey aren’t revised. As we discuss in the text, economists and policymakers typically rely more on the establishment survey than on the household survey in gauging the current state of the labor market.) Substantial revisions are particularly likely for data released during the beginning of a recession. 

In Macroeconomics, Chapter 9, Section 9.1 (Economics, Chapter 19, Section 19.1), we give an example of substantial revisions in the employment data. Figure 9.5 (reproduced below) shows that the declines in employment during the 2007–2009 recession were initially greatly underestimated. For example, the BLS initially reported that employment declined by 159,000 during September 2008. But after additional data became available, the BLS revised its estimate to a much larger decline of 460,000.

Similarly, in Macroeconomics, Chapter 15, Section 15,3, in the Apply the Concept “Trying to Hit a Moving Target: Making Policy with ‘Real-Time Data’,” we show the BEA’s estimates of the change in real GDP during the first quarter of 2008 have been revised substantially over time. The BEA’s advance estimate of the change in real GDP during the first quarter of 2008 was an increase of 0.6 percent at an annual rate. But that estimate of real GDP growth has been revised a number of times over the years, mostly downward. Currently, BEA data indicate that real GDP actually declined by 1.6 percent at an annual rate during the first quarter of 2008. This swing of more than 2 percentage points from the advance estimate is a large difference, which changes the picture of what happened during the first quarter of 2008 from one of an economy experiencing slow growth to one of an economy suffering a sharp downturn as it fell into the worst recession since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

The changes to the estimates of both employment and real GDP during the beginning of the 2007–2009 recession are not surprising. The initial estimates of employment and real GDP rely on incomplete data. The estimates are revised as additional data are collected by government agencies. During the beginning of a recession, these additional data are likely to show lower levels of employment and output than were indicated by the initial estimates. If the U.S. economy is in a recession in the second quarter of 2022, we can expect that the BLS and BEA will revise their initial estimates of employment and real GDP downward, which—depending on the relative magnitudes of the revisions to the two series—may resolve the paradox of rising employment and falling output. 

Or it’s possible that the U.S. economy is not in a recession. In that case, the employment data may be correct in showing an increase in the number of people working, and the real GDP data may be revised upward to show that output has actually been expanding during the first six months of 2022. Economists and policymakers will have to wait to see which of these alternatives turns out to be the case.

Are We at the Start of a Recession?

On Thursday morning, April 28, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its “advance” estimate for the change in real GDP during the first quarter of 2022. As shown in the first line of the following table, somewhat surprisingly, the estimate showed that real GDP had declined by 1.4 percent during the first quarter. The Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta’s “GDP Now” forecast had indicated that real GDP would increase by 0.4 percent in the first quarter. Earlier in April, the Wall Street Journal’s panel of academic, business, and financial economists had forecast an increase of 1.2 percent. (A subscription may be required to access the forecast data from the Wall Street Journal’s panel.)

Do the data on real GDP from the first quarter of 2022 mean that U.S. economy may already be in recession? Not necessarily, for several reasons:

First, as we note in the Apply the Concept, “Trying to Hit a Moving Target: Making Policy with ‘Real-Time’ Data,” in Macroeconomics, Chapter 15, Section 15.3 (Economics, Chapter 25, Section 25.3): “The GDP data the BEA provides are frequently revised, and the revisions can be large enough that the actual state of the economy can be different for what it at first appears to be.”

Second, even though business writers often define a recession as being at least two consecutive quarters of declining real GDP, the National Bureau of Economic Research has a broader definition: “A recession is a significant decline in activity across the economy, lasting more than a few months, visible in industrial production, employment, real income, and wholesale-retail trade.” Particularly given the volatile movements in real GDP during and after the pandemic, it’s possible that even if real GDP declines during the second quarter of 2022, the NBER might not decide to label the period as being a recession.

Third, and most importantly, there are indications in the underlying data that the U.S. economy performed better during the first quarter of 2022 than the estimate of declining real GDP would indicate. In a blog post in January discussing the BEA’s advance estimate of real GDP during the fourth quarter of 2021, we noted that the majority of the 6.9 percent increase in real GDP that quarter was attributable to inventory accumulation. The earlier table indicates that the same was true during the first quarter of 2022: 60 percent of the decline in real GDP during the quarter was the result of a 0.84 decline in inventory investment.

We don’t know whether the decline in inventories indicates that firms had trouble meeting demand for goods from current inventories or whether they decided to reverse some of the increases in inventories from the previous quarter. With supply chain disruptions continuing as China grapples with another wave of Covid-19, firms may be having difficulty gauging how easily they can replace goods sold from their current inventories. Note the corresponding point that the decline in sales of domestic product (line 2 in the table) was smaller than the decline in real GDP.

The table below shows changes in the components of real GDP. Note the very large decline exports and in purchases of goods and services by the federal government. (Recall from Macroeconomics, Chapter 16, Section 16.1, the distinction between government purchases of goods and services and total government expenditures, which include transfer payments.) The decline in federal defense spending was particularly large. It seems likely from media reports that the escalation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will lead Congress and President Biden to increase defense spending.

Notice also that increases in the non-government components of aggregate demand remained fairly strong: personal consumption expenditures increased 2.7 percent, gross private domestic investment increased 2.3 percent, and imports surged by 17.7 percent. These data indicate that private demand in the U.S. economy remains strong.

So, should we conclude that the economy will shrug off the decline in real GDP during the first quarter and expand during the remainder of the year? Unfortunately, there are still clouds on the horizon. First, there are the difficult to predict effects of continuing supply chain problems and of the war in Ukraine. Second, the Federal Reserve has begun tightening monetary policy. Whether Fed Chair Jerome Powell will be able to bring about a soft landing, slowing inflation significantly while not causing a large jump in unemployment, remains the great unknown of economic policy. Finally, if high inflation rates persist, households and firms may respond in ways that are difficult to predict and, may, in particular decide to reduce their spending from the current strong levels.

In short, the macroeconomic forecast is cloudy!

Source: The BEA’s web site can be found here.

New! – 4/07/22 Podcast – Authors Glenn Hubbard & Tony O’Brien revisit the role of inflation in today’s economy & likely Fed responses in trying to manage it.

Authors Glenn Hubbard and Tony O’Brien reconsider the role of inflation in today’s economy. They discuss the Fed’s possible responses by considering responses to similar inflation threats in previous generations – notably the Fed’s response led by Paul Volcker that directly led to the early 1980’s recession. The markets are reflecting stark differences in our collective expectations about what will happen next. Listen to find out more about the Fed’s likely next steps.

The Remarkable Movement in Inventory Investment in the New GDP Numbers

The Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its “advance estimate” of real GDP for the fourth quarter of 2021 on January 27, 2022. (The BEA’s advance estimate is its first, or preliminary, estimate of real GDP for the period.) At an annual rate, real GDP grew by 6.9 percent in the fourth quarter, which was a rate well above what most economists had forecast.  It’s always worth bearing in mind that the advance estimate will be revised several times in future BEA reports, but at this point the growth rate is the highest since the second quarter of 2000. 

The following table shows the interesting fact that final sales of goods and services (line 2) grew only about 2 percent, higher than in the third quarter of 2021, but well below the growth in sales during the previous four quarters. In fact, more than 70 percent of the growth in real GDP during the quarter took the form of increases in inventories (line 3).

Is the fact that economic growth during the quarter mainly took the form of businesses accumulating inventories bad news for the economy? Most likely not. It is true that we often sees firms accumulate inventories at the beginning of a recession. This outcome occurs when firms are too optimistic about sales and end up adding goods to inventory that they had expected to be able to sell. In other words, actual investment expenditures turn out to be greater than plannedinvestment expenditures; the difference between planned and actual investment being equal to the value of unintended inventory accumulation. (We discuss the relationship among planned investment, actual investment, and unintended inventory accumulation in Economics, Chapter 22, Section 22.1 and in Macroeconomics, Chapter 12, Section 12.1.)

It’s possible that some of the inventories firms accumulated during the fourth quarter of 2021 were the result of sales being below the level that the firms had forecast. During the quarter, the Omicron variant of the Covid virus was spreading in several parts of the United States and some consumers cut back their purchases, partly because they were more reluctant to enter stores. It seems likely, though, that the majority of the inventory accumulation was voluntary—and therefore part of planned investment—as firms attempted to rebuild inventories they had drawn down earlier in the year. Some firms also may have decided to hold more inventories than they typically had prior to the pandemic because they wanted to avoid missing sales in case Omicron resulted in further disruptions to their supply chains. 

Source:  The BEA’s website can be found at this link.

We Will Never See Anything Like It Again: Movements in Real GDP during the Covid-19 Recession

There are a number of ways in which the Covid-19 pandemic was unlike anything the United States has experienced since the 1918 influenza pandemic. Most striking from an economic perspective were the extraordinary swings in real GDP. The following figure shows quarterly changes in real GDP seasonally adjusted and calculated at an annual rate. There were three recessions during this period (shown by the shaded areas).

The first of these recessions occurred during 2001 and was similar to most recessions in the United States since 1950 in being short and relatively mild. Real GDP declined by 1.5 percent during the third quarter of 2001. The recession of 2007–2009 was the most severe to that point since the Great Depression of the 1930s. The worst periods of the 2007–2009 were the fourth quarter of 2008, when real GDP declined by 8.5 percent—the largest decline to that point during any quarter since 1960—and the first quarter of 2009, when real GDP declined by 4.6 percent. 

Turning to the 2020 recession, during the first quarter of 2020, only at the end of which did Covid-19 begin to seriously affect the U.S. economy, real GDP declined by 5.1 percent. Then in the second quarter a collapse in production occurred unlike anything previously experienced in the United States over such a short period: Real GDP declined by 31.2 percent. But that collapse was followed in the next quarter by an extraordinary recovery in production when real GDP increased by 33.8 percent—by far the largest increase in a single quarter in U.S. history.

The following figure shows the changes in the components of real GDP during the second and third quarters of 2020. In the second quarter of 2020, consumption spending declined by about the same percentage as GDP, but investment spending declined by more, as many residential and commercial construction projects were closed. Exports declined by nearly 60 percent and imports declined by nearly as much as many ports were temporarily closed. In the third quarter of 2020, many state and local governments relaxed their restrictions on business operations and the components of spending bounced back, although they remained below their levels of late 2019 until mid-2021. 

Even when compared with the Great Depression of the 1930s, the movements in real GDP during the Covid-19 pandemic stand out for the size of the fluctuations. The official U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis data on real GDP are available only annually for the 1930s. The following figure shows the changes in these annual data for the years 1929 to 1939. As severe as the Great Depression was, in 1932, the worst year of the downturn, real GDP declined by less than 13 percent—or only about a third as much as real GDP declined during the worst of the 2020 recession.

We have to hope that we will never again experience a pandemic as severe as the Covid-19 pandemic or fluctuations in the economy as severe as those of 2020.

Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Note: Because the BEA doesn’t provide an estimate of real GDP in 1928, our value for the change in real GDP during 1929 is the percentage change in real GDP per capita from 1928 to 1929 using the data on real GDP per capita compiled by Robert J. Barro and José F. Ursúa. LINK

NEW! – 02/19/21 Podcast – Authors Glenn Hubbard & Tony O’Brien discuss early thoughts on the Biden Administration’s economic plan.

Authors Glenn Hubbard and Tony O’Brien discuss early thoughts on the Biden Administration’s economic plan. They consider criticisms of the most recent stimulus packages price tag of $1.9B that it may spur inflation in future quarters. They offer thoughts on how this may become the primary legislative initiative of Biden’s first term as it crowds out other potential policy initiatives. Questions are asked about what bounce we may see for the economy and comparisons are made to the Post World War II era. Please listen and share with students!

The following editorials are mentioned in the podcast:

Glenn Hubbard’s Washington Post Editorial with Alan Blinder

Olivier Blanchard’s comments on the Stimulus in a Peterson Institute for International Economics post

Larry Summer’s WaPo editorial about the risks of the stimulus:

Just search Hubbard O’Brien Economics on Apple iTunes or any other Podcast provider and subscribe!

Please listen & share!

Does Automation Lead to Permanent Job Losses?

This post on the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’s Page One blog discusses how the belief that automation can lead to permanent job losses is an example of the “lump of labor” fallacy. Click HERE to read the article.

The post refers to the circular-flow diagram, which we discuss in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 18 in the textbook. We discuss the effects of automation and robots on the labor market in Chapter 16.