Research >> Economics
DJ-BTMU U.S. Business Barometer surged by 1.6%
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For the week ending December 14 2013, the DJ-BTMU U.S. Business Barometer surged by 1.6 percent to 99.1 after two consecutive weeks’ drop, reaching the highest level since July 2008. However, the barometer could be distorted by seasonal adjustment, which is volatile around the holiday season. As to the indexes, most of them increased considerably and both consumption and production sides contributed to the barometer to a large degree. Chain store sales and railroad freight carloadings rose by 4.8 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively. Also, truck production and electric output jumped by more than 10 percent.
On a year-over-year basis, the barometer showed a gain of 0.9 percent, which compares to an average -3.3 percent decline over the Great Recession (determined to have ended in June 2009 according to the NBER). After flat lining in 2006, and declining from 2007 through 2009, the barometer bounced back in 2010 to rise by 3.4 percent, which was the strongest increase since 1994 (+4.0 percent), but not so impressive when compared to an -8.0 percent drop in 2009. The rate of increase for the 2012 slightly slowed to 1.4 percent following 2.2 percent in 2011.
The smoothed version of the barometer, which attempts to account for weekly volatility, continued to increase by 0.2 percent. Its year-over-year growth rate was 0.7 percent.
Posted: December 26, 2013 Thursday 10:00 AM