Declining Federal Reserve Indicators Signal Economic Weakness

The services economy is contracting sharply, signaling impending unemployment and economic downturn.

### Declining Economic Indicators Signal Trouble Ahead for U.S. Services Sector
* 📉 Several Federal Reserve Services indicators have significantly dropped in August, with Philadelphia's number hitting its **lowest since mid-2020**, reflecting a **broader economic downturn**.
* 🔍 The bond market is witnessing bullish activity, suggesting **rising unemployment**, particularly in the services sector, which encompasses **vital areas of the modern digital economy**.
* 💼 Approximately **86% of jobs** fall under the services category, highlighting the importance of monitoring the **goods economy** as a leading indicator for potential **service sector declines**.
* 📊 Recent manufacturing data corroborates this downturn, as various sources indicate a **synchronized global economic slowdown**, with the Federal Reserve expected to **cut rates multiple times** in response.
* 📰 CNN reported a **decrease in consumer demand** this summer, contrasting sharply with last year's spending boom, as Americans **tighten their budgets** in anticipation of **rising unemployment**.
* 📉 The average of five Regional Fed surveys for August revealed a **concerning decline in the services economy**, with Philadelphia's survey **plummeting to -25.1**, the **second lowest since the pandemic began**.
* 👥 Employment conditions are worsening, as indicated by a **significant drop in full-time employment indices** across multiple regions, with many firms reporting **job cuts**.
* 📉 Overall, the convergence of negative indicators from the Fed surveys, manufacturing data, and anecdotal evidence from various industries suggests that the U.S. economy may be **transitioning into a full-blown recession**.

several of the Federal Reserve Services indicators have absolutely tanked here in August, including Philadelphia's number, which plunged to its lowest level since the middle of 2020. Well, everyone is glued to Nvidia for a tomorrow world that can't possibly live up to the hype. Here in today's economy, we've got bulls running loose in the bond market, which increasingly confirms the unemployment coming from now the services sector too. And services aren't just restaurants and dentist offices; we're talking about spending on access to mobile networks and all kinds of content subscriptions, huge pieces of the 21st-century digital economy. About 86% of all jobs are classified as services jobs, though a lot of those do relate to the transportation management and sale of goods too. And that's why we watch the goods economy as a leading indicator for where the rest of services might end up. And according to all of the most recent data on manufacturing, including the feds, things have turned decisively lower here as well. So when we consider a wider variety of figures from

other sources. They are all backing up the same message, whether it is inside the US and services of production, or coming from outside the country and globally synchronized markets, at least those outside of invidious capture. They all say the same thing: it isn't that the FED is going to be cutting rates. The rate cuts won't help. Everything is pointing to why the FED will be cutting rates and not just once or twice in a gentle psycho. Lower rates are never a good sign, and even CNN of all media outlets agrees. They even picked up on the fact that this summer is not going well, and it's not going well in the services economy. They write, Consumer demands seem to have tapered off so far this summer, according to surveys of American businesses that sell any kind of service to make a profit, ranging from restaurants to dental clinics. That weakness is also evident in the latest spending figures, a far cry from last year's lucrative summertime spending spree when Americans shelled out for films and

high-profile concerts, and this summer they're doing well. They're battening down the hatches and hunkering down and tightening their belts because they can see the unemployment problem coming from a mile away, just as the FED is now confirming, as we heard from J Powell and Jackson Hole over the weekend. Unemployment, not consumer prices, and unemployment, that genie is already out of the bottle. And it starts with, well, it starts with manufacturing, but it's hitting the services economy already too. That's why, for example, in the treasury market, in the bond market, we continue to see, first of all, rates that are defying our September effect expectations. They've only backed up a few basis points from their low that they set earlier in August, and since then, it's been mostly downward rather than upward, so very little backing up in interest rates. At the same time, we keep seeing more and more bull steepening and decisive bull steepening signals on the treasury curve. The crucial 2-year 10-year spread is UN

inverting, and it's the same with other spreads as well, such as the middle part of the curve, the 5-year 10-year spread. That one has widened out to almost 20 basis points yet again there too. So, as far as the treasury curve is concerned, everything that we're hearing from the services economy, as well as from JPW and the Federal Reserve, it all adds up to the same thing that bull steepening does every time we go through this bull steepening, lower interest rates. Those are not good signs, so for the service economy in the US. We've got five Regional Fed surveys to choose from, and really what we do is we put all five of them together as an average to see what the regional surveys might add up as far as a national indication, and then we compare those to the other sources such as the ISM and S&P Global to see if there are any outliers or if they're all saying the same consistent message one after another after another. But with the five Regional Fed surveys, you usually have a mix of

monthly as well as Regional variation, but over time, despite the fact that we have different indicators in each region, despite the fact that we have statistical as well as these Regional variations over time, the FED Regional surveys, when you average them together, they correspond very closely with the other surveys, surveys on Services as well. So, we get a pretty solid signal from the FED Regional surveys once we put them all together, and what we've seen so far for the month of August is, as usual, there's a mix. There's a few of the services PMIs that look relatively decent and improving, and then in August, there's three of the five that look not improving, look increasingly bad, including Philadelphia's, which fell to its lowest since 2020. So, if we start out with New York, the New York Services survey, that actually improved for August, rising to a positive number 1.8 from a minus 4.5. And keep in mind, with the regional Fed surveys, the dividing line between

contraction and growth is zero, not 50, as it is for the say the ism or S&P Global. Chicago was the other one, didn't actually improve, like just fractionally, but basically stayed the same at minus 4.26. So you got New York and Chicago as the best of the bunch, and they weren't really all that good. And then comes all the bad ones, the other three regional fed surveys, starting with Philadelphia. The August 2024 non-manufacturing business Outlook survey for that region of the US economy, that was minus 25.1, which is the lowest, as I said, since March, April, and May of 2020. And really was the second worst in the series outside of the pandemic. Only September of 2011 had been lower at minus 41. So one of the lowest numbers in the series, although the series data only goes back to 2011. But still - 25.1. And that was down six points from what had been the lowest of the cycle, minus 19.1 in July. And it shows that, yeah.

maybe CNN was right for once, and they were on to something about the services economy, and it wasn't just, you know, the usual indicators. What we're seeing more and more from these services PMIs and survey data is employment, negative employment. Here's what Philadelphia said: the full-time employment index fell 10 points to -4.9, its second consecutive negative reading and lowest reading since May of 2020. Most firms, 53%, reported no change, which is not unusual, while the share of firms reporting decreases in full-time employment, 28%, exceeded the share reporting increases of just 13%. The part-time employment index edged down from +4.0 to -0.5, and the average work week at least ticked up to +2.1 following a slight negative reading last month. So, we're getting more and stronger indications of negative employment conditions in Philadelphia services, but this is being replicated across more and more of these survey PMIs and survey results. Moving on to Richmond, Richmond, the fifth district.

survey of service sector activity. Their revenues index fell to minus 1, which had been plus 5 back in July. It had been back and forth between these negative and positive positions going back to earlier the earlier part of this year. The demand index from Richmond fell to minus 3 from plus 1 and had been zero, so that one is turning lower in the summertime as well. And most important of all, as I just mentioned with Philadelphia, the employees number of employees index for richm services minus 4 for the second consecutive month and the fifth of our regional fed surveys on Services comes from Texas. The Texas service sector Outlook survey, that one, the business activity index fell to - 7.7 from minus 0.1 in July, so that one is rolling over as well. Future business activity fell back to plus 3.3 from what had been a 2-year high in July. And the Texans, or at least the Dallas fed, likes to include lots of comments from survey respondents in the region, and they're usually a pretty decent mix of positive and negative, but

Over the last couple of months in manufacturing, especially here in Services, you see a lot more, well, like this one from the publishing industry, non-internet publishing industry. Our data supports the thesis that consumer spending is pairing back materially. We will start seeing significant negative impacts to our business if spending continues to decline at the current rate through the end of the year. We are very concerned that the Federal Reserve has waited too long to trim rates, not that that will matter, and that by the time any future cuts begin impacting the economy, which they don't, consumer spending will be at recession levels. And here's another one from data processing and hosting. Content costs continue to rise while pressure from consumers and prospects to decrease prices is continually increasing. So, you got lower revenues, costs that are going up, weak demand from customers, it leads to unemployment. Here's another one from rental and leasing. We are a large heavy equipment distributor in Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico. At the end of July, we were down

6.3% decline in this year versus last year has been consistently increasing throughout the year. We were only down 10% during the pandemic of 2020, and we averaged a 10.7% increase in sales per year over 65 years. So, this year's decline is unusual for us, and it is unsettling. People are out of money, and this one just simply said from the utilities industry, I feel that a recession is going to hit the US. But it's not just these anecdotes. When we compile and put together all of these Regional Fed surveys into a single average, what you see is contraction in the services economy, or at the very least, slowing down in the services economy, along with the rest of it through 2022 into 2023, then a bit of a respite earlier this year, which, as you know, seasonal upswing or something else before, as CNN put it, as I said at the beginning of this video, starting to fall and fall more sharply into the summertime. The average of the five Regional Fed

services PMIs for August came out to 9.25, which was down sharply from the US 4.63 in July. So, we have a renewed weakness in the service economy, except this time with increasing references and increasing indications relating to employment and jobs. More confirmation of everything else that we're seeing in terms of corporate warnings in the goods economy to the BLL steepening on the treasury curve. Even the US Services economy is falling right in line, and it isn't just the FED surveys. As I mentioned, the FED surveys, even though you have different measurements within those fed surveys, um, when you put those together and average them out, the average actually does correspond very strongly with other service sector indications and PMI, such as ISM and S&P Globals. We look at S&P Global, their numbers for the services sector are an outlier. They are not shared by any of the other data and indications that we have. They've been stuck around the 50s, around 55, middle 50s for the

last four or five months here, but that S&P Global continues to show a seasonal pattern in especially their service PMI. So, that one is likely more of a seasonal quirk in the data than it is any strength in the services economy. Because you look at the other data in addition to the regional fed surveys, you've got the ism's non-manufacturing index, which continues to be weak. Even though that number had increased back above 50 for the month of July, we'll get the August update from the ism next week. It had been as low as 48.8 in June, which was a shocking low, very consistent recession signal. U 53.8 the month before, and then 49.4, so below 52 of the last 4 months. And anything below 53 is really consistent with contraction and downturn. And so, we line up these surveys together, the FED Regional services pmis and the ism surveys. They're actually pretty well corresponding with one another with the

S&P Global numbers that had been consistent with those for some reason likely the seasonal quirk being the outlier here in 2024. And of course, all of this in the services sector numbers are matched and really following what's happening in manufacturing. So if we briefly go through and review the five regional Fed manufacturing indexes, and they're not the same regions, got we swapping out Kansas City for Chicago. But essentially, when you do the same thing, you take the five regional manufacturing PMIs, you put them together in an average, and they correspond pretty strongly and pretty consistently with other PMIs and data on the manufacturing sector. For the month of August, we had the Empire, which was slightly better but still negative. You had, which is New York. We had Kansas City, which improved from -3 to -3, so it's less negative. Even had the Dallas survey, which was its least negative, still highly negative, but its least negative since January 2023 at -9.7. That's how bad it's been in Texas.

part of the economy. On the other side of things, the Philly Fed's manufacturing survey actually plunged, so something's really wrong in Philadelphia on services as well as manufacturing. That one had been at plus 4 back in July, and the Philly Fed's manufacturing PMI had been positive really going back to February, which suggests some big-time weakness and big-time rolling over going on in Philadelphia on both sides of the economy. And then Richmond comes in the fifth of the regional Fed surveys at minus 19 for August, which was down only two points from the US 17 in July. But at minus 19, that's as low as April and May of 2020, or it's comparable to September 2008. So Richmond was deeply into contraction territory. Philadelphia rolled over pretty sharply, and the other ones didn't really make up for those getting worse. The average of the five regional Fed manufacturing PMIs for August was minus 8.68, which was slightly worse than the minus 8.4 in July, and you can see the trend here in the average is

going lower ever since around April. So, there had been a moderate uptick earlier in the year, likely related to over-ordering as companies panicked with the Red Sea being blocked off and therefore fearing not being able to have goods in time for the summer or fall or whatever else, making sure that they have stock, remembering what happened in 2021. So, there was a spillover across the goods economy, everybody producing and really pulling forward demand from the second half of the year into the early part of the year, and now we're seeing the manufacturing goods economy rolling back over at the worst possible time as we face more, not just unemployment and uncertainty, but unemployment itself. And we put the feds, the average of the FED Regional PMIs together with the national PMI and Manufacturing for S&P Global or the ISM. As it turns out, the FED surveys are the most optimistic of the bunch. Even S&Ps has fallen off pretty sharply here more recently, their flash reading for the month of

August 2024 was down at 48.0, and of course, the ISM for July was already at 46.8 and deeply negative. So, the manufacturing sector is declining, retrenching, falling off again as we head into the second half, with more and serious negatives showing up in the Fed surveys, as well as other surveys like the ISM for the services side of the economy, and a lot of them referencing now unemployment. It's just consistent with everything that we keep getting from every direction. The bull steepening that's happening in U.S. Treasuries, we continue to see that happening to the point that the 2-year Treasury rate is now almost uninverted with the 10-year. That's not just a warning sign; it's also a timing signal of everything we just talked about. Philadelphia Fed Services per CPMI plunges. Manufacturing is rolling over in all three categories, whether it be S&P, ISM, or the Fed Regional manufacturing surveys. So, with comments and surveys, all of them consistent with the market, we got

manufacturer clearly rolling over as the seasonal upswing. And it's all happening as unemployment. Businesses are making decisions about their workforce. So if the US economy and the rest of the world is indeed being converted from a half recession that it's been in since last fall into a full-blown one, this is just what it would look, feel, and even sound like. How about the rest of the world? Well, over in Europe and Germany, they're complaining about what's going on here in the United States. Talked about what's happening over in Germany and Europe in the video link below. As always, thank you very much for joining me. Huge thank you to your university members and subscribers. And until next time, take care.

New Data Shows the ENTIRE Service Economy Is Facing Collapse

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Decline in Federal Reserve Services Indicators

Federal Reserve Services indicators have significantly dropped in August, with Philadelphia's number reaching its lowest since 2020.

The services sector, which comprises 86% of all jobs, is experiencing a slowdown in consumer demand and spending, leading to potential unemployment.

The bond market is showing bullish signals, indicating that lower interest rates may not be effective in addressing the upcoming unemployment issue.

The Impact of Regional Fed Surveys on the US Services Economy

The treasury curve is experiencing a bull steepening, with lower interest rates, which is not a good sign for the US services economy.

The five Regional Fed surveys, when averaged, provide a solid signal and closely correspond with other surveys on services.

For August, New York showed improvement, while Philadelphia's survey hit its lowest since 2020, indicating a mixed and challenging outlook for the services sector.

Negative Employment Trends in the Services Economy

The services sector is experiencing negative employment trends, with Philadelphia's full-time employment index falling to -4.

9 and Richmond's revenues index dropping to -1.

Texas is also seeing a decline in business activity, with the outlook for future activity turning negative.

Survey respondents across various industries are expressing concerns about declining consumer spending and rising costs, leading to potential unemployment and negative impacts on business.

Unusual Decline in Sales and Weakening Services Economy

3% decline in sales is unusual, especially after averaging a 10.

Regional Fed surveys indicate a contraction and slowing down in the services economy, with a sharp drop in the average PMI for August.

The S&P Global services sector data appears to be an outlier, showing a seasonal pattern rather than strength in the economy, while other indicators like the ISM non-manufacturing index also signal weakness and contraction.

Regional Fed Manufacturing Indexes and Their Impact

The five regional Fed manufacturing indexes show a consistent trend, with the average for August at minus 8.

Philadelphia's manufacturing survey experienced a sharp decline, indicating significant weakness in both services and manufacturing.

Overall, the manufacturing sector is rolling back over, raising concerns about unemployment and economic uncertainty.

Decline in the Manufacturing Sector and Economic Uncertainty

The manufacturing sector is showing consistent decline, with negative signals from various surveys and a bull steepening in U.

Unemployment is becoming a key concern as businesses make workforce decisions.

The global economy, particularly in Europe and Germany, is also feeling the impact of the U.