Global| Jun 26 2020State Coincident Indexes in May
|in:Viewpoints
Summary
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's state coincident index map is again completely red- all 50 states saw drops of least 1 percent from February to May. The smallest drop in this period was Arizona's 4.9 percent; Hawaii plunged [...]
The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's state coincident index map is again completely red- all 50 states saw drops of least 1 percent from February to May. The smallest drop in this period was Arizona's 4.9 percent; Hawaii plunged a staggering 53.9 percent.
April-May, of course, was another story, as was foreshadowed by the labor market data. 33 states had gains, with Kentucky's 16.1 percent topping the list. Still, 17 states continued to slide in May, with Delaware down a woeful 9.8 percent. As was the case for the labor market results, one can't generalize and say that states that reopened early did noticeably better; buttoned-down New Jersey recorded a larger increase in May than Texas and Florida. To throw more cold water on the May pickup, California and New York were down from April. Texas was the only one of the big 4 states to see a gain, and its 1 percent figure was far from Texas-sized.
The discrepancy between the state results and the national figure, compiled using the same data and methodology, continued in May. The national increase from April to May is reported to have been 2.5 percent, which certainly seems unusual given that none of the 4 largest states were anywhere close to that. Of other large states, only Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania had gains in excess of 2.5 percent (Pennsylania was up 7.5 percent), but the sum of those 3 states' nominal GDP is far less than California's. One would think they are quite inadequate counterweights to the weakness in the very largest states.
Charles Steindel
AuthorMore in Author Profile »Charles Steindel has been editor of Business Economics, the journal of the National Association for Business Economics, since 2016. From 2014 to 2021 he was Resident Scholar at the Anisfield School of Business, Ramapo College of New Jersey. From 2010 to 2014 he was the first Chief Economist of the New Jersey Department of the Treasury, with responsibilities for economic and revenue projections and analysis of state economic policy. He came to the Treasury after a long career at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he played a major role in forecasting and policy advice and rose to the rank of Senior Vice-President. He has served in leadership positions in a number of professional organizations. In 2011 he received the William F. Butler Award from the New York Association for Business Economics, is a fellow of NABE and of the Money Marketeers of New York University, and has received several awards for articles published in Business Economics. In 2017 he delivered Ramapo College's Sebastian J. Raciti Memorial Lecture. He is a member of the panel for the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia's Survey of Professional Forecasters and of the Committee on Research in Income and Wealth. He has published papers in a range of areas, and is the author of Economic Indicators for Professionals: Putting the Statistics into Perspective. He received his bachelor's degree from Emory University, his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and is a National Association for Business Economics Certified Business EconomistTM.