U.S. Economy
Weekly Economic Index
The Weekly Economic Index (WEI) provides a signal of the state of the U.S. economy based on data available at a daily or weekly frequency. It represents the common component of 10 different daily and weekly series covering consumer behavior, the labor market and production. It is updated Tuesday and Thursday at 10:30 a.m. CT, using data available up to 8 a.m. CT.
September 14, 2021: Update
- The WEI is currently 7.83 percent, scaled to four-quarter GDP growth, for the week ended September 11 and 7.68 percent for September 4; for reference, the WEI stood at 1.53 percent for the week ended February 29, 2020.
- The increase in the WEI for the week of September 11 (relative to the first revision for the week of September 4) is due to an increase in consumer confidence, which more than offset decreases in retail sales and steel production. The WEI for the week of September 4 was revised upward due to the staffing index, fuel sales, and electricity output, which while lower than the prior week, still provided more positive signals than previously available data. Because the WEI measures changes over a 52-week period, the large positive readings for the weeks of September 11 and September 4 also reflect the sharp deterioration in economic conditions during the same time last year.
NOTES: When federal holidays occur on a publishing date or change the release schedule for the underlying data, the report is delayed by 24 hours. Data are updated at Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and jimstock.org.
WEI Authors
The WEI was developed by Daniel J. Lewis, an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; Karel Mertens, senior economic policy advisor at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas; and James H. Stock, professor of economics at Harvard University.
