US Manufacturing data visualization
The latest data release charted and visualized, including an analysis
There’s a lot of chatter in the markets today with the release of this latest manufacturing data, with traders and investors continuing to raise fear that we are heading towards a recession.
I charted the above metrics concerning the US Manufacturing indices, which typically show the production output of the country and have a strong positioning in the overall health of the economy.
So let’s breakdown the charts and how to read them:
- the dark line is the index value of the data release, and these charts go back one full year of data releases. These models will be added to in future months so that we can see how the economy is changing over time.
- the faded line (right vertical axis) is the individual data point’s z-score or how many multiples from the standard deviation is that data point’s value. The standard deviation is of the set of 1 year data, and this will change over time as more data is added.
State of the Economy
Here are the other recent stories on the state of the economy:
Using a baseline value of 50.0, we can see that the US Manufacturing Indices are coming in a bit weaker for the entire year on the ISM data. The metric that is a bit concerning for me is the New Orders index, which has plummeted in the month of August. I believe this is one of the major concerns driving the shift in tonality from Fed. Chair Jerome Powell during the Jackson Hole conference.
I still believe the economy is doing well and not recessionary at this moment in time considering we have seen these values in the data before. This data does lend some credence to the talking point though, and it makes sense to continue watching to see if the individual metric turns into a trend.
We have some other critical data coming in this week including JOLTS job openings tomorrow, ISM Services PMI, and Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday. I’ll make some additional visualizations for those as they come out.
