Research >> Economics
BTMU U.S. Business Barometer increased by 0.1%
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For the week ending September 5 2015, the BTMU U.S. Business Barometer increased by 0.1 percent to 99.2. This week’s barometer was chiefly driven by strong performance in chain store sales, which posted a robust gain of 0.7 percent (mainly fuelled by strong business gains for dollar stores). As to the production side, gains in some indexes were entirely cancelled out by losses in others. For instance, electric output and steel production rose by 8.0 and 0.6 percent, respectively, after declining last week. In contrast, auto and truck production dipped by 1.3 and 8.6 percent, respectively.
On a year-over-year basis, the barometer showed a loss of 0.1 percent, which compares to an average -3.3 percent decline over the Great Recession (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 2013 slowed to 0.7 percent following 1.5 percent in 2012.
The smoothed version of the barometer, which attempts to account for weekly volatility, remained at 99.1. Its year-over-year growth rate was 0.4 percent.
Posted: September 17, 2015 Thursday 10:00 AM