In a recent interview on CBS’s 60 minutes, Ben Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, said that he expects the recession to come to an end this year and the recovery to begin next year. While we do not know what data this assertion is based on, AIER’s statistical indicators of business-cycle conditions do not show any clear signs of approaching recovery.

For the third month in a row, the percentage of leaders expanding stands at 17 (2 out of 12). Several of the leading indicators recently experienced slight upturns. But, the upturns were not large enough and have not lasted long enough to warrant a change in the appraisals of the series as contracting.

The cyclical score, which is based on separate purely mathematical analysis of the leaders, is 28, and also has not changed for three months.  For all our measures, a score below 50 indicates that a contraction is more likely than an expansion.

The primary roughly coincident indicators reinforce the view of a continued recession. The percentage expanding remains at zero and the cyclical score has fallen to 14 this month from 15 last month.

Read a general description of our indicators and methods of analysis.

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