mr. Stephen Kopitz writes:
The other is vehicle mileage, which is either a very short-term lead (i.e. a failure a month or so before the recession officially starts), or a match, or up to 4-5 months behind if, say, a 12-month period is used. moving amounts.
I downloaded the FRED series https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TRFVOLUSM227SFWA and built the series:
Figure 1: Vehicle miles driven, million, seasonally adjusted (blue). Peak-to-trough dates as determined by the NBER are in grey. DOE FHA through FRED, NBER.
Is negative VMT growth a leading indicator of a recession. I created a dummy variable that takes on a value of one when m/m growth is negative and is plotted (light blue bar).
Figure 2: Negative VMT growth (blue bar). Peak-to-trough dates as determined by the NBER are shaded in dark grey. DOE FHA via FRED, NBER and author’s calculations.
Note that negative growth is preceded by a monthly recession… but also by many non-recessions.
