- by New Deal democrat
There are no significant updated data releases today - which is disconcetering, considering how far behind we are over three weeks after the end of the government shutdown.
How far behind are we?
One area that is important for determining if the consumer economy is close to a turn is spending on big ticket items - vehicles and other durable consumer goods.
Courtesy of Redbook, which updates retail shopping weekly, we know that last week was the best YoY comparison in almost three years, up 7.6%:
But this does not cover the expensive items which tend to turn down first. Real retail sales, which do include motor vehicles, have been updated through September (blue), but manufacturers new orders for consumer goods are only updated through August (red):
Even worse, while nominal manufacturers sales have been updated through August (blue), but real manufacturing and trade sales (red) are only available through July:
Nominal motor vehicle sales have just been updated this morning through August:
And the BEA’s last update of the number of light weight vehicles (blue) and heavy truck sales (red) is only available through August as well:
The lag is just as bad for the very important housing sector, where housing permits, sales, and units under construction are only updated through August:
And real residential fixed investment as a share of real GDP was last updated for Q2:
But the biggest laggard of all is the QCEW, the “gold standard” for growth in the jobs sector, to which the monthly reports are ultimately benchmarked, which was last updated in August for Q1:
Hence my continued focus on the regional Fed manufacturing and services reports, as well as the nationwide manufacturing and services ISM surveys, as it does not appear this situation is going to be remedied for another month at least.
