Six States Not Keeping Up with Improving U.S. Economy

The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia has released leading economic indexes, providing a six-month forecast for each of the 50 states. Six states — Wisconsin, Louisiana, Wyoming, Alaska, Rhode Island and Hawaii — are expected to experience a decline in economic growth. Forty-four states are expected to grow. The projected U.S. aggregate economy is expected to grow 1.8 percent over the next six months.

The following figure provides a summary of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia’s findings.

Econbrowser compares Wisconsin and U.S. leading economic indexes in the following graph.

Looking at the near term prospects for an economic rebound in Wisconsin Econbrowser authors, Hamilton and Chinn, wrote,

The Philadelphia Fed’s leading indices indicate that there is little prospect that such trends will reverse. Given the Contractionary policies implemented in the budget [1], this is no surprise.

Reference

Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. State Leading Indexes. (2011). Research Department. December. http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/regional-economy/indexes/leading/2011/LeadingIndexes1211.pdf