Does Negative GDP Growth Portend Recession?

While it was generally expected that 4Q was a slow quarter for economic growth, it was probably a surprise to many that the growth rate was negative.  What are the odds that this negative growth portends a recession?

Assuming that the revised number remains negative this is the 42nd time in 279 quarters since 1947 that quarterly GDP growth has been negative.  Of those 42 times, 27 of them came during a recession (as defined by NBER).  Therefore GDP has contracted 15 times while the economy was not in recession.  Below is a list of those times.  The economy entered into a recession in the following quarter five out of those fifteen times.

Of course, NBER defines recession dates after the fact, so we could be in a recession right now and just not know it.  Given that the market is hardly lower today, that would probably be a surprising result.

Note: Figures are NON-Annualized

Capacity Utilization and Unemployment

As an addition to the previous post about how GDP is lagging potential GDP, it's worth pointing out that unemployment is the major driver of the gap.  Below is a chart which plots the employment rate (inverse of the unemployment rate) against the potential GDP gap.  Also included is capacity utilization data, which is compiled by the Fed and is also still below its peak from the last cycle.  Capacity utilization has been trending lower for decades.

Potential Real GDP

The CBO calculates a measure of potential real GDP for the US, which is its view of how much the economy could produce if it were operating at full capacity.  Below is a chart of the current output gap based on CBO's numbers.  It's pretty amazing to think that four years into recovery we're still further below our potential than at the trough of every post war recession except for the 1980s.

Nominal GDP Grew at 5.5% in 3Q12

The first revision of 3Q12 GDP was released this morning and showed that GDP grew at 2.7% annualized during the quarter, which was 0.7% better than the initial estimate.  That's also 1.4% more than it grew in 2Q12, when it only grew by 1.3% annualized.

People often forget that the headline GDP number is reported on a "real" basis, which means that it is adjusted for inflation.  In reality, real GDP is anything but real though, since the world is measured in nominal, not real numbers (especially important for debt), and economists do a debatable job of measuring inflation anyways.

On a nominal basis GDP was up 5.5% annualized last quarter, a pretty big number!  The deflator (inflation) ran at 2.7% which is also a fairly large number in its own right.  The 5.5% growth was actually the largest quarterly increase in nominal GDP this cycle, although it's not quite as large as it was at other points last decade.

Source: BEA

Can Sandy Boost GDP?

There seems to be some debate about how much Sandy will affect the economy.  Some think that it will provide a real boost to GDP; others are skeptical.  While it's not possible to know for certain how much will be spent specifically to rebuild from Sandy, loss estimates can help us back into an estimate of how much of a boost the storm could provide to economic activity.  If you assume that the amount of money spent to repair damages is exactly equal to the amount of economic losses, then it's pretty easy to calculate how much that would boost GDP.

Right now the estimate from insurance catastrophe modeling firm Eqecat is that Sandy caused $10-$20B worth of economic damage.  Unfortunately $20B is a small number relative to $15T in GDP--it's only 0.13%.  Even if you assume that the spending will be double or triple the losses, the amount as a percentage of GDP is relatively small.

Source: Arithmetic

Historical Relationship of S&P 500 Earnings to GDP

The S&P 500 is up nearly 16% year to date, even though earnings are expected to grow 4-5% for the year.  If earnings grow by that much, the growth rate would be roughly in line with nominal GDP growth, which was up 3.9% y/y in the most recent quarter (real annualized GDP growth was only 1.3%).

Below is a long term chart of S&P 500 earnings compared to GDP.  Even though earnings are slightly more volatile than GDP, over the long term the growth of each has been about the same.  Recently S&P 500 earnings have grown faster than nominal GDP as the economy has had a V shaped recovery.  One might expect this circumstance to reverse, or at least temper itself going forward.

Retail Sales June 2012

Retail sales were reported this morning for June and were weak again.  For the third straight month, retail sales declined, which is a reasonably rare occurrence.  Since 1992, there have been 4 periods that retail sales have declined in three straight months.  Two of those periods happened in 2008; one of those periods lasted for 6 months.  Below is a list of negative retail sales streaks:

Looking at the bigger picture, retail sales growth has slowed to just a 3.8% y/y increase in June.  The slowing trend doesn't necessarily indicate recession, but certainly demonstrates that the rapid growth phase of the economic cycle is over.  As recently as this time last year retail sales were up 9.2% y/y, but  now it looks like there isn't the same slack in the economy that there was then to generate large growth numbers.