Official recession calls are the responsibility of the NBER Business Cycle Dating Committee, which is understandably vague about the specific indicators on which they base their decisions. This committee statement is about as close as they get to identifying their method.

There is, however, a general belief that there are four big indicators that the committee weighs heavily in their cycle identification process. They are:

The Latest Indicator Data

According to the Federal Reserve:

Industrial production decreased 0.5 percent in February after increasing 0.8 percent in January. Sizable declines in the indexes for both utilities and mining in February outweighed a gain of 0.2 percent for manufacturing. The output of utilities dropped 4.0 percent, as unseasonably warm weather curbed the demand for heating. Mining production fell 1.4 percent and has decreased nearly 1.3 percent per month, on average, over the past six months. At 106.3 percent of its 2012 average, total industrial production in February was 1.0 percent below its year-earlier level. Capacity utilization for the industrial sector decreased 0.4 percentage point in February to 76.7 percent, a rate that is 3.3 percentage points below its long-run (1972–2015) average.

The full report is available here.

Today’s report on Industrial Production for February shows a month-over-month decline of 0.5 percent (-0.49 percent to two decimal places), which was worse than the Investing.com consensus of a 0.3 percent decline. The January 0.9 percent increase was revised down a notch to 0.8 percent.

The chart below shows the year-over-year percent change in Industrial Production since the series inception in 1919, the current level is lower than at the onset of 15 of the 17 recessions over this time fame of nearly a century.

Capacity Utilization

The Fed’s monthly Industrial Production estimate is accompanied by another closely watched indicator, Capacity Utilization, which is the percentage of US total production capacity being used (available resources includes manufacturing, mining, and electric and gas utilities). In addition to showing overall economic growth and demand, Capacity Utilization also serves as a leading indicator of inflation.

Here is a chart of the complete Capacity Utilization series, which the Fed began tracking in 1967. The linear regression assists our understanding of the long-term trend. Note the interim peak in December 2014.