Industrial Production - Capacity and Utilization Rate

We just had the latest industrial capacity utilization rate released, with a microscopic 0.1% uptick in capacity utilization month over month...but are things getting busier, or are we shedding capacity faster?



This is a look at the year over year change in the industrial capacity from the Fed, using the total index. Looks like we set another record here...

Year Over Year Change in Total Revolving Credit Outstanding

This is total revolving credit, non-seasonally adjusted. When you look at the data month over month there is strong seasonality exhibited, so the non-seasonally adjusted numbers are best viewed year over year.

When the retail season is considered, let's look at private wage income, revolving credit and...? Any suggestions welcome to answer the question, "Show me the money?" - what the heck are consumers going to spend?

Personal Income: Private Wages Year Over Year Change

An assertion was made regarding private sector wages going up - can't see it from this data from NIPA Table 2.1...

U-6 Update

So here is the latest U-6, unadjusted 16.3% which becomes a seasonally adjusted 17.5%



Now we examine the year over year change in the unadjusted U-6, and while the rate of change is declining from the peak (due to the elevated prior year base now that we are almost two years into this recession) it is still in excess of the peak from the prior recession. Also, recall that the absolute level of U-6 unemployment is still increasing year over year until the graph goes below the 0% line.



The spread between U-3 and U-6 remains elevated.

EMRATIO - Continued negative acceleration Year Over Year

Almost two years into the recession, the rate of the year over year decline in the EMRATIO is actually accelerating...using the most recent recession as a guide, the peak rate of change for EMRATIO occurred about 36% of the way through the EMRATIO decline associated with that recession. If this month is the peak year over year rate of change and that relationship holds, then we would begin to see improvements in EMRATIO about 51 months from October, 2009 or about January, 2014.

Yep, its that bad

After some crosstalk with fellow members of the commentariat at Calculated Risk, one remark was "Are you sure? It can't be that bad!"

So I made a clean download of the data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) Table 2.1 (FD: well, I took all the Section 2 tables because I could). From Line 1, Personal Income I subtracted Line 17, Government Social Benefits to Persons. I then Q1 from the first year of the series from Q1 of the second year of the series and then copy/pasted to the end of the data...producing the graph above (with at least the y-axis labeled, another hat tip to RATM).

Yes, it's that bad.

BEA NIPA Tables


Edit: after some discussions regarding normalization, here is the (YoY change in personal income - govt benefit payments)/(personal income - govt benefit payments)

Continued Deterioration in Personal Income - Govt Social Benefits

(NB: Y-axis is in billions of USD - hat tip RATM)
Well we had our 3.5% preliminary GDP number out this morning, so what is the sustainability of this "recovery?" Given how central consumption is to the economy, how has the personal income of my fellow citizens been doing - and not just the headline number, but what is personal income less government social benefit transfer payments?

Data from the latest BEA release, soon to be updated with September numbers (NIPA Table 2.1)
Download MS Excel Table with 2009 values

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