According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, Florida will avoid a recession through the start of 2012. The Phillie Fed produces a monthly coincident index for each of the 50 states.
Florida is growing at about 2 percent, which isn’t the best in the nation, but it’s growth. See report.
The coincident indexes combine four state-level indicators to summarize current economic conditions in a single statistic. The four state-level variables in each coincident index are nonfarm payroll employment, average hours worked in manufacturing, the unemployment rate, and wage and salary disbursements deflated by the consumer price index (U.S. city average). The trend for each state’s index is set to the trend of its gross domestic product (GDP), so long-term growth in the state’s index matches long-term growth in its GDP.
